The other islands are Enderbury, Rawaki (formerly Phoenix), Manra (formerly Sydney), Birnie, McKean, Nikumaroro (formerly Gardner), and Orona (formerly Hull).

However, politically and for statistical compilation purposes, Howland and Baker are considered part of the group known as the United States Minor Outlying Islands.

However, today, the airport is still there, and (as of 2016[update]) it was still home to a small military presence: 20 persons were residing there, mostly living in the buildings erected during the occupation of the island by Great Britain and the United States between 1936 and 1976.

Herbs, bunchgrass, morning-glory vines, and a few clumps of trees form the main vegetation on the island, while birds, rats, and a species of beetle are the known fauna.

Heavily mined for guano in the late 19th century, Enderbury has seen little human impact following the evacuation of the last four residents in 1942, during World War II.

The island is covered with coconut palms, scrub forest, herbs, and grasses, including the species Tournefortia, Pisonia, Morinda, Cordia, Guettarda, and Scaevola.

Manra contains definite evidence of prehistoric inhabitation in the form of at least a dozen platforms and remains of enclosures in the northeast and northwest portions of the island.

K. P. Emory, an ethnologist at Honolulu's Bishop Museum, has estimated that two groups of people were present on Manra, one having migrated there from eastern Polynesia, the other from Micronesia.

In 1938, Manra was selected as one of three atolls to be included in the Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme, which represented the final expansion of the British Empire.

Gallagher constructed a village on the western end of the atoll, with wide, coral-paved streets, a parade ground, a cooperative store, an administrative center and residence, and a radio shack.

[9] Like the other atolls in the settlement project, Nikumaroro was abandoned in 1963 due to the scarcity of fresh water, together with the declining market for the copra that had been produced on the island.

Nikumaroro has appeared in media stories due to a theory that Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan might have landed their plane at low tide on the edge of the atoll's barrier reef during their fateful around-the-world attempt in 1937.

The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) made several expeditions to Nikumaroro during the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century, finding possible evidence, but no conclusive proof, for this theory.

[11] Orona, or Hull Island, measures approximately 8.8 by 4 km (5.5 by 2.5 mi), and, like Canton, is a narrow ribbon of land surrounding a sizable lagoon with depths of between 15 and 20 metres (49 and 66 ft).

[12] Unlike Manra, Orona does not seem to have been worked for guano, but it became a coconut plantation and was made a p. It was the British Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme.

[20] Jeremiah N. Reynolds's 1828 report to the American Navy recommended an exploring expedition to the Pacific because "the English charts, and those of other countries are as yet very imperfect.

Much of their information has been obtained from loose accounts from whalers who were careless in some instances, and forgetful in others, and which were seized with greediness by the makers of maps and charts, in order to be the first to make these discoveries known.

[22] Contemporary reports and later analysis provide conflicting evidence regarding the identification of the initial discoverers, a situation only complicated by the numerous names given to each of the atolls.

The Frenchman Louis Tromelin reported his 1823 discovery of Phoenix island at 3°42'S, 170°43'W, while cartographer John Arrowsmith plotted it 12 minutes further north; a rediscovery of Sydney is at 4°26'30", 171°18'.

[23] On August 19, 1840, Commander Charles Wilkes of the United States Exploring Expedition mapped it and renamed it McKean Island, after a member of his crew.

[1] In addition, Reynold's report describes a "Barney's Island" roughly at Canton's position, which may have been named and discovered by Capt.

[31] However, Joshua Coffin (also reportedly aboard the Ganges) is sometimes credited with the discovery, and is said to have named the island after his ship's owner, Gideon Gardner.

[32] During the United States Exploring Expedition of 1838–1842, Charles Wilkes identified Gardner's Island based on the previously reported position and confirmed its existence.

[1] Daniel MacKenzie of the American whaler Minerva Smith, charted the island in 1828, and, believing it to be a discovery, named it after his ship's owners.

)[41] During this period of joint U.S.-British control, Canton was extensively developed, first as a seaplane-landing site, then later as a refueling station for trans-Pacific civilian and military aircraft.

Although shelled and bombed a few times during World War II, neither Canton nor any of the Phoenix Islands was ever occupied by Japanese forces.

Collaborations between Kiribati, the New England Aquarium, and Conservation International have allowed scientific expeditions to explore the Phoenix Islands to quantify the ocean's flora and fauna.

[44] In May 2010, it was reported that a British sailor, Alex Bond, from Penryn, Cornwall, had saved a group of "desperate and starving" Kanton islanders after chancing upon them on his way to Australia.

A supply ship expected to bring them food four months earlier had never arrived, and the 10 children and 14 adults had been surviving on fish and coconuts.

At the time, Bond was reportedly working for a UK-based disaster-relief charity, ShelterBox, which provides emergency aid to needy people.