Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument

Group of unorganized United States Pacific Island territories

The Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument is a group of unorganized, mostly unincorporated United States Pacific Island territories managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service of the United States Department of the Interior and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States Department of Commerce. These remote refuges are "the most widespread collection of marine and terrestrial life protected areas on the planet under a single country's jurisdiction". The monument includes endemic trees, grasses, and birds adapted to life at the equator; the rare sea turtles and whales and Hawaiian monk seals that visit Johnston Atoll; and high quality coral reefs. U. S. federal law prohibits resource destruction or extraction, waste dumping, and commercial fishing in the monument areas. Research, free passage, and recreation are allowed. On June 17, 2014, U. S. President Barack Obama proposed using his executive powers to expand the marine protected area to 782000 square miles (2,025,372 km2). Sport fishing is exempt and public comments were solicited. He then signed a proclamation on September 25, 2014, expanding the monument to six times its original size, resulting in 490,343 square miles (1,269,982 square kilometers)

In September 2017, Trump Administration U. S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke recommended that the boundaries of the monument be reduced by an unspecified amount. By the end of his term in office, in January 2021, former President Trump had not followed this recommendation. In March 2023, President Biden directed the Secretary of Commerce to consider making the monument and additional areas within the U. S. EEZ a National Marine Sanctuary, as well as to study a renaming of the monument, its islands, and their related national wildlife refuges.

Because the islands are scattered throughout the ocean, the climate is different on each island. Baker, Howland, and Jarvis Islands have an equatorial climate, with scant rainfall, constant wind, and burning sun. Johnston Atoll and Kingman Reef have a tropical climate, but are generally dry, with consistent northeast trade winds with little seasonal temperature variation. Palmyra Atoll has a hot, equatorial climate. Because the atoll is located within the low pressure area of the Intertropical Convergence Zone where the northeast and southeast trade winds meet, it is extremely wet with between of rainfall each year. Researchers found that by 2060, warmer temperatures will attract skipjack tuna from the Western Pacific to the protected waters of the Monument, away from areas that are heavily fished. Wake has a current transient population of ca. 125 military personnel and contractors. Johnston Atoll had a peak population of 1,100 military and civilian contractor personnel in 2000, but it was evacuated by 2007. From 2010 through 2021, volunteer biologists lived and worked on the island in groups of 5, but since May 2021 the island has had no permanent inhabitants. Four to twenty Nature Conservancy and U. S. Fish and Wildlife staff live at Palmyra Atoll at any one time. The four other islands are usually uninhabited. Public entry to the islands is by special use permit from U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and is generally restricted to scientists and educators. Only Wake Island and Palmyra Atoll have serviceable runways; Jarvis, Johnston Atoll, Baker, and Howland Islands had airstrips in earlier times but they have long been abandoned and are no longer operational.