Isla de los Estados is an Argentine island that lies 29 kilometres (18 mi) off the eastern extremity of Tierra del Fuego, from which it is separated by the Le Maire Strait.

[3] Almost a century after the Spaniards, the Dutch explorers Jacob le Maire and Willem Schouten passed the island on 25 December 1615, naming it Staten Landt.

To his left Le Maire noted the land mass which he called Staten Landt; he theorized it was perhaps a portion of the great 'Southern Continent.'

The Dutch expedition to Valdivia of 1643 intended to sail through Le Maire Strait but strong winds made it instead drift south and east.

[4] The small fleet led by Hendrik Brouwer managed to enter the Pacific Ocean sailing south of the island disproving earlier beliefs that it was part of Terra Australis.

Seal hunters established a short-lived factory there (1786-1787), but abandoned it after Duke of York wrecked there on 11 September 1787 while bringing supplies.

In 1862 Argentine pilot Luis Piedrabuena established a shelter near Port Cook, and built a small seal oil extraction facility on the island.

[7] The island is also referenced in Richard Henry Dana Jr.'s book Two Years Before the Mast as the first land they see after leaving San Diego.

More than twenty years later, the San Juan del Salvamento Lighthouse was inaugurated on 25 May 1884, by Comodoro Augusto Lasserre.

[9] The only settlement is the Puerto Parry Naval Station, located in a deep and narrow fjord on the northern coast of the island.

[14] The climate of the island is strongly influenced by the subpolar low pressure system which develops around the Antarctic Circle and the surrounding oceans.

[17] Isla de los Estados is covered with dense low forests of Nothofagus southern beech.

The animal life is composed mainly of penguins, orcas, seals, seagulls and cormorants, as well as the human-introduced deer and goats.

[19] The island and surrounding waters, including the Burdwood ocean bank to its east, has been designated an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International because it supports significant populations of southern rockhopper and Magellanic penguins, imperial shags and striated caracaras.