Phoenix Islands

The Phoenix Islands Protected Area was established in 2008 in Kiribati, in the central Pacific, and protects some 408,250 km², an area comparable to that of California. UNESCO inscribed it on the World Heritage List in 2010, and at that time it was the largest marine property on the List.

It comprises eight atolls and coral islands, two submerged reefs and fourteen seamounts, in a group that is practically uninhabited: only one of the islands, Kanton, has a permanent population of a few dozen people. That extreme isolation, thousands of kilometres from any major centre of population, has preserved one of the last near-intact oceanic coral ecosystems on the planet.

Its reefs hold hundreds of species of coral and fish, with populations of large predators — reef sharks, Napoleon wrasse, groupers — at densities no longer found on inhabited reefs, and its islands are a breeding ground for seabirds in their hundreds of thousands. Kiribati progressively closed the area to commercial fishing, giving up the income from tuna licences, a decision of great cost for a very poor country, and one that was recognised internationally. Bleaching episodes driven by El Niño have severely affected its corals, with documented recoveries that make it a laboratory of climate change.