Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA)
The Phoenix Islands are a remote string of eight atolls and two submerged reefs in the Central Pacific, just five degrees south of the equator. These islands and the water surrounding them cover 408,250 km2 and represent one of Earth’s last intact oceanic coral archipelago ecosystems. The Phoenix Islands reefs are what a reef might have looked like one thousand years ago before the presence of humankind’s impacts such as coastal development and over fishing.
Under the direction of the Kiribati government, the Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA) also provides protection for the terrestrial habitats to safeguard the important nesting grounds for seabirds, many of which are threatened or endangered, and rare traditional plants that have cultural and medicinal values in Kiribati, but are now threatened on more populated islands. This project has generated a high level of international cooperation to ensure the effective management and enforcement over such a vast area.
The Phoenix Islands Protected Area is the first marine-protected area in the region to include large areas of deep-water habitat. Because the deep sea is mostly unexplored, protecting it also safeguards many species that have yet to be studied or even discovered. It also serves as an added buffer against the global changes that are happening worldwide.
Island Topography
The islands have a sparse and simple vegetation cover, with no open freshwater, and groundwater on only the larger islands. Significantly, mangroves are totally absent from the island group. The Phoenix Islands exhibit classic remote island and atoll characteristics, including steep reef drop-offs, relatively low species diversity coupled with endemicity, unusual species assemblages, high fish abundance, harsh island habitats and vegetation, and large seabird nesting colonies.
Settlements
For the early canoe explorers who originally mapped the South Pacific some 3,000-5,000 years ago, the Phoenix Islands must have been diminutive in comparison to the lushness and largesse of other Pacific islands such as Fiji, Tahiti, Hawaii, and Samoa. Archeological evidence indicates that there have been a few settlements in the Phoenix Islands, but because of their isolation from larger population centers, these early settlers never stayed for very long. The islands show the typical legacy of temporary and sporadic human use and settlement over several hundreds of years, with significant species introductions, both of plants (e.g. coconuts) and animals (e.g. rats, rabbits), and remnants of guano mining. None of the islands have hosted long-term human settlements due to the scarcity of terrestrial and freshwater resources, and only one island, Kanton, is currently inhabited.