Navassa Island: US Fish and Wildlife Uninhabited Caribbean Island

Summary: Navassa Island is an uninhabited Caribbean island administered as an unincorporated unorganized U.S. territory via the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

satellite image of Navassa Island: NASA (Johnson Space Center Photo ID ISS014-E-8889), Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Navassa Island is administered through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as an unincorporated unorganized territory of the United States.

The tiny, uninhabited island is located in the Jamaica Channel that, along with the Windward Passage between Cuba and Hispaniola, connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Caribbean Sea. Navassa’s strategic location lies about 33 miles (54 kilometers) west of Haiti, 83 miles (135 kilometers) northeast of Jamaica, and 99 miles (160 kilometers) south of southeastern Cuba’s Guantánamo Bay (Bahía de Guantánamo).

Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus is credited with the island’s sighting in 1493 during his second voyage, from 1493 to 1496, to the New World’s Northern Hemisphere. While stranded on Jamaica’s north central coast for one year, from June 1503 to June 1504, during his fourth voyage across the North Atlantic Ocean, the determined navigator sent two dugouts with Arawak natives under the command of Diego Méndez de Segura and Bartolomé Flisco across the Jamaica Channel, beyond Navassa, to Hispaniola to secure ships in order to return to Spain.

Navassa is shaped as a flat-topped prominence, with a maximum elevation of 252.6 feet (77 meters) and an area of about 2 square miles (5.2 square kilometers). Apart from a small area of the north coast with steep, rocky, lightly sanded beaches, Navassa’s coast is defined primarily by limestone cliffs. An extensive coral reef prevents access to Navassa except at Lulu Bay on the southwestern coast.

Scatterings of cactus, primarily Mammillaria nivosa (known commonly as woolly nipple cactus), along with trees and undergrowth brush, cover the island’s terrain. Found elsewhere in the Caribbean as well as in Florida, Pseudopheonix sargentii var. navasana (soo-doh-FEH-niks sahr-jent’-ee) apparently survives on Navassa only as a single, living specimen, found during the island’s first natural resources inventory conducted for the U.S. Department of the Interior by the U.S. Geological Survey from July 24 to Aug. 5, 1998. Forests feature only four arboreal species: short-leaf fig (Ficus popuinea var. brevifolia), mastic (Sideroxylon foetidissimum), pigeon plum (Coccoloba diversifolia) and poisonwood (Metopium brownie).

Tiny Navassa is a disputed island, claimed by both Haiti and the United States. Haiti has claimed national sovereignty over Navassa since the island republic’s first constitution on July 8, 1801. The United States has claimed Navassa as a guano-rich, unaffiliated, unoccupied island under the Guano Islands Act of 1856 since the discovery of the island’s phosphate-rich bird droppings, valuable for fertilizer and gunpowder, by Baltimore sea captain Peter Duncan on July 1, 1857.

Two natural resources inventories of Navassa conducted for the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Office of Insular Affairs from July 24 to Aug. 5, 1998, and from April 29 to May 12, 1999, produced preliminary results of over 650 terrestrial species. Realization of the island’s rich biodiversity led to the establishment of the Navassa Island National Wildlife Refuge on Dec. 3, 1999. Under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the refuge encompasses a 12 nautical mile (13+ miles; 22-plus kilometers) radius of marine habitat around the island’s 1,344 acres.

Apart from transient Haitian fisherman who apparently camp on the island while fishing Navassa's waters, Navassa is unoccupied and is not open to the public. Special scientific and enhancement permits for monitors and researchers, especially of elkhorn (Acropora palmata) and staghorn (Acropora cervicornis) corals, may be requested through the Caribbean Islands Refuge Complex headquarters at Boquerón, Puerto Rico.

Permit contact details:
Susan Silander, Project Leader
Caribbean Islands NWR Complex
Navassa National Wildlife Refuge
P.O. Box 510
Boguerón, Puerto Rico 00622

phone: (787) 851-7258
fax: (787) 255-6725
email: Caribbeanisland@fws.gov

Navassa Island's forbidding east coast: US Geological Survey, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

satellite image of Navassa Island: NASA, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Navassa_ISS014.jpg

Navassa Island's east coast: US Geological Survey, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NavassaEastCoastAerialUSGS.jpg

For further information:

"Navassa Island." U.S. Department of the Interior > Office of Insular Affairs > Islands We Serve.
Available @ https://www.doi.gov/oia/islands/navassa

"Navassa Island: A Photographic Tour (1998-1999)." U.S. Geological Survey > Coastal and Marine Geology Program > St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center.
Available @ https://coastal.er.usgs.gov/navassa/