The primary modern mandate governing seven of these nine landmasses is environmental protection. Grouped together with their adjacent marine realms, Baker, Howland, Jarvis, Johnston, Kingman Reef, and Palmyra form the core of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. Created in 2009 and expanded in 2014, the monument safeguards marine habitats from commercial seabed mining, deep-sea bottom trawling, and commercial longline fishing.
At Kingman Reef, where dry land shrinks to a mere sliver of coral rubble at high tide, underwater surveys reveal one of the most intact coral communities on Earth. Apex predators, particularly grey reef sharks and white-tip reef sharks, make up more than 85 percent of the total fish biomass. This upside-down trophic pyramid cannot survive in proximity to industrial fishing operations.
Managing these habitats presents monumental logistical hurdles. Biologists from the US Fish and Wildlife Service must charter deep-ocean research vessels sailing out of Honolulu, traveling thousands of nautical miles across open ocean to conduct routine surveys. Palmyra Atoll serves as the sole operational scientific base in the central Pacific group. Co-owned and managed alongside The Nature Conservancy, Palmyra operates a sustainable research center powered by solar microgrids, hosting visiting oceanographers studying climate resilience, coral spawning cycles, and migratory pelagic bird colonies.
Midway Atoll functions under its own distinct conservation model. Famous as the pivot point of the Pacific War in June 1942, Midway's Eastern and Sand Islands are now home to millions of nesting Laysan and black-footed albatrosses. Despite its refuge status, Midway retains infrastructure costs that challenge annual budgets. The airfield on Sand Island, Henderson Field, is federally maintained as an Extended-range Twin-engine Operational Performance Standards (ETOPS) emergency strip. Commercial airliners traversing routes between North America and East Asia rely on Henderson Field as a designated ditching runway if an engine fails mid-ocean.
