page_title: Kiritimati
section_title: Conservation and extinction
hierarchical_section_title: Kiritimati / Conservation and extinction
caption_attribution_description: "The first British Hydrogen bomb is dropped near Christmas Island"
context_page_description: Kiritimati or Christmas Island is a Pacific Ocean coral atoll in the northern Line Islands. It is part of the Republic of Kiribati. Its Gilbertese name is the rendition of the English word "Christmas" according to its sounds, in which the combination ti is pronounced s, and the name is thus pronounced.
  The island has the greatest land area of any coral atoll in the world, about 388 square kilometres; its lagoon is roughly the same size. The atoll is about 150 km in perimeter, while the lagoon shoreline extends for over 48 km. Kiritimati comprises over 70% of the total land area of Kiribati, a country encompassing 33 Pacific atolls and islands.
  It lies 232 km north of the Equator, 2,160 km south of Honolulu, and 5,360 km from San Francisco. Kiritimati Island is in the world's farthest forward time zone, UTC+14, and is one of the first inhabited places on Earth to experience the New Year. Despite being 2,460 km east of the 180 meridian, a 1995 realignment of the International Date Line by the Republic of Kiribati moved Kiritimati to west of the dateline.
  Nuclear tests were conducted on and around Kiritimati by the United Kingdom in the late 1950s, and by the United States in 1962.
context_section_description: In December 1960, the British colonial authority gazetted Kiritimati as a bird sanctuary under the "Gilbert and Ellice Island Colony Wild Birds Protection Ordinance" of 1938. Access to Cook Island, Motu Tabu and Motu Upua was restricted. Kiritimati was declared a Wildlife Sanctuary in May 1975, in accordance with the Wildlife Conservation Ordinance of the then self-governing colony. Ngaontetaake and the sooty tern breeding grounds at North West Point also became restricted-access zones. Two years later, active conservation measures got underway.
  To a limited extent, permits to enter the restricted areas for purposes like research or small-scale ecotourism are given. Kiribati's Wildlife Conservation Unit participates in the Kiritimati Development Committee and the Local Land Planning Board, and there exists an integrated program of wildlife conservation and education. New Zealand is a major sponsor of conservation efforts on Kiritimati.
  Egg collecting for food on a massive scale was frequent in the past but is now outlawed. It is to be noted that the sooty terns for example could sustain occasional collection of effectively all of a season's eggs (over 10 million), if given sufficient time to recover and if cats are absent. Even egg collecting on a scale that significantly decreases costly food imports thus in theory could be possible, but not until the cat and rat populations have been brought under control. Poaching remains a concern; with the population rising and spreading out on Kiritimati, formerly remote bird colonies became more accessible and especially the red-tailed tropicbirds and the Sula are strongly affected by hunting and disturbance. Tropicbirds are mainly poached for their feathers which are used in local arts and handicraft; it would certainly be possible to obtain them from living birds as it was routinely done at the height of the Polynesian civilisation.
  It may seem that the erstwhile numbers of seabirds may only ever be approached again by the wholesale eradication of the feral cats. While this has been since shown to be feasible, it is not clear whether even a severe curtailing of the cat population would be desirable. Though it previously was assumed that the small Polynesian rat is of little if any harm for seabirds, even house mice have been shown to eat seabird nestlings. Most nesting birds, in particularly Procellariiformes, are now accepted to be jeopardised by Rattus exulans. Kiritimati's cats are meanwhile very fond of young seabirds; it even seems that their behaviour has shifted accordingly, with cats being less territorial generally and congregating in numbers at active bird colonies, and generally eschewing rats when seabird chicks are in plenty.
  Possession of an unneutered female cat on Kiritimati is illegal, and owners need to prevent their domestic cats from running wild (such animals are usually quickly killed in traps set for this purpose). Nighttime cat hunting has made little effect on the cat population. As noted above, vigorous protecting of active nesting grounds from cats by traps, poison and supplemented by shooting while otherwise leaving them alone to hunt rats may well be the optimal solution.
   There is no reliable data on the environmental and public health impact of the nuclear tests conducted on the island in the late 1950s. A 1975 study claimed that there was negligible radiation hazard; certainly, fallout was successfully minimised. More recently however, a Massey University study of New Zealand found chromosomal translocations to be increased about threefold on average in veterans who participated in the tests; most of the relevant data remains classified to date.
  The 1982/83 "mega-El Niño" devastated seabird populations on Kiritimati. In some species, mortality rose to 90% and breeding success dropped to zero during that time. In general, El Niño conditions will cause seabird populations to drop, taking several years to recover at the present density of predators. Global warming impact on Kiritimati is thus unpredictable. El Niño events seem to become shorter but m
caption: 8 November 1957:
  Grapple X Round C1, the first successful British hydrogen bomb test, detonates over Kiritimati's South East Point.
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