Phoenix Islands

The Phoenix Islands, or Rawaki, are a group of eight atolls and two submerged coral reefs that lie east of the Gilbert Islands and west of the Line Islands in the Polynesia sub-region of Oceania, in the central Pacific Ocean north of Samoa. They are part of the Republic of Kiribati. Their combined land area is 28 square kilometres (11 mi2). The only island of any commercial importance is Canton Island (also called Abariringa). The other islands are Enderbury, Rawaki (formerly Phoenix), Manra (formerly Sydney), Birnie, McKean, Nikumaroro (formerly Gardner), and Orona (formerly Hull). The islands had no permanent inhabitants until European colonization, and the current inhabitants descend from the Micronesian Gilbertese people despite the islands' location in the Polynesian Triangle. The Phoenix Islands Protected Area, established in 2008, is one of the world's largest protected areas and is home to about 120 species of coral and more than 500 species of fish. The Phoenix Islands are uninhabited, except for a few families who live on Canton Island. Historically, the Phoenix Islands have been considered part of the Gilberts island group (sometimes known as the Kingsmill island group). Geographically, Baker Island and Howland Island, two unincorporated territories of the United States that lie to the north of the Phoenix Islands, could be considered part of the same island group as the Phoenix Islands. However, politically and for statistical compilation purposes, Howland and Baker are considered part of the group known as the United States Minor Outlying Islands. The United States once laid claim to all the Phoenix Islands under the 1856 Guano Islands Act. However, when Kiribati became an independent republic in 1979, the United States and Kiribati signed the Treaty of Tarawa, under which the United States released all claims to the Phoenix Islands (except for Baker and Howland), which thenceforth became recognized as part of Kiribati. The Phoenix Islands began to be known by that name sometime around the 1840s, as a generalization from one of the islands in the group, which had been named Phoenix Island earlier in the century (probably because Phoenix was a common name for the whaling ships that frequented the nearby waters at the time). The Phoenix Islands were the site of the last colonial expansion attempted by the British Empire (through the Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme) in the late 1930s.

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