legend which are generally absent in the area's colonial history. Climate Campbell Island has a maritime tundra climate (Köppen ET). The island receives only 647 hours of bright sunshine annually and it can expect less than an hour's sunshine on 215 days (59%) of the year. The peaks of the island are frequently obscured by clouds. It has an annual rainfall of , with rain, mainly light showers or drizzle (although it occasionally snows in the winter), falling on an average of 325 days a year. It is a windy place, with gusts of over occurring on at least 100 days each year. Variations in daily and annual temperatures are small with a mean annual temperature of , rarely rising above . The warmest temperature ever recorded was and the coldest was . Flora and fauna Important Bird Area Campbell Island is the most important breeding area of the southern royal albatross. The island is part of the Campbell Island group Important Bird Area (IBA), identified as such by BirdLife International because of its significance as a breeding site for several species of seabirds as well as the endemic Campbell teal and Campbell snipe. Campbell Island also hosts numerous penguin species that breed on the island, including the yellow-eyed penguin, the rockhopper penguin, and the erect-crested penguin. Other albatross species breed on the island as well, such as the wandering albatross, the light-mantled sooty albatross, and both the Black-browed mollymawk and the grey-headed mollymawk. Other bird species that breed on the island include the sooty shearwater, the grey petrel, the white-chinned petrel, the endemic Campbell Island shag, the grey duck, the southern skua, the southern black-backed gull, the red-billed gull, the Antarctic tern, the song thrush, the Common blackbird, the Dunnock (Hedge sparrow), the New Zealand pipit, the white-eye, the lesser redpoll, the chaffinch, and the starling. World's most remote tree Campbell Island is home to what is believed to be the world's most remote tree – a solitary Sitka spruce, more than 100 years old. The nearest tree is over away on the Auckland Islands. The tree is believed to have been introduced by Lord Ranfurly between 1901 and 1907. The tree has been proposed as a golden spike signal marker for the start of the anthropocene epoch. Conservation In 1954, the island was gazetted as a nature reserve. Feral Campbell Island cattle were eliminated by about 1984 and