Public access to the three islands in the national park is prohibited in order to protect breeding birds, especially the Torresian imperial-pigeon.

Following regular illegal shooting of the birds there during the early and mid 20th Century, the population using the islands was subject to a long protection campaign and monitoring program by conservation activists Margaret and Arthur Thorsborne.

The vine forests are poorly known but appear not to have been subject to fire for a long time and are likely to prove botanically interesting when fully investigated.

Many of the plants appear to indicate a relationship to the pied imperial-pigeons which regularly transport seed considerable distances and thus, it would appear, enrich the islands’ species diversity.

Common canopy species include Semecarpus australiensis (tar tree), Palaquium galactoxylum, Myristica insipida and Alstonia scholaris.

North Brook Island, the largest in the group, was in 1944 the venue for a series of British and American tests on the military uses of mustard gas.