Let ’s travel to the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument . These370,000 square nautical miles(490,000 straightforward miles ) of protect islands and body of water debase from Wake Atoll in the northwest to Jarvis Island in the southeast . In this cluster of small islands , you might find the sooty tern nesting in Jarvis Island , the peregrine tattler browse around Palmyra Atoll and brownish dummy roosting on Kingman Reef .
All of those doll mean you ’re going to see a lot of something else — bird droppings .
Brace yourself for a small history moral that might make you take a real interest group in what island have bird , and thus bird droppings . That is , if you ’re interested in claiming an imperialistic post in deserted islands and declaring them under vague , if legal , American ownership . All because of a pile of poop .
Let ’s depart not too far in the past . In 2014 , Secretary of State John Kerry and the Obama administration decided to expand the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument from a honorable 86,888 square mi ( 225,039 square kilometers ) to over 490,000 square miles ( nearly 1.3 million straight kilometers ) . That also mean banning commercial fishing , drilling and other disruptive activities in what became theworld ’s largest marine bema . But where did the United States get the confidence to protect those island — and their surrounding waters ?
Bird nincompoop .
More specifically , the Guano Islands Act of 1856 , which basically says that if a U.S. citizen receive a pile of guano on any rock , island or Florida key and that location is n’t already under possession of a administration , you’re able to consider it " as appertaining to the United States . " ( We ’ll get to " appertaining " later . )
This law did n’t get on the book as a joke . In fact , it was a veridical crisis that caused lawgiver to take deposits of fowl doo badly . In the early 19th century , seafowl droppings were all the furore in farming fertilizer , thanks to those droppings being super deep in phosphorus andnitrogen . Things got so wild there was even faux guano on the securities industry , enounce Columbia law professor Christina Duffy Burnett , in aninterview with Cabinet cartridge holder . U.S. farmers really wanted to get their hands on the stuff , and the Peruvians , which hadcontrolled the food market , Burnett said , were running out of it .
So U.S. lawmakers create this nebulose act that says should you find guano on any unclaimed land , the United States can decide it ’s theirs for the pickings . But it does n’t say what " appertaining " really intend . It does n’t entail the guano - rich unclaimed nation becomes part of the U.S. exactly . It just means , essentially , that the U.S. can apply these islands or key or rocks for pick up guano . And then they can get the heck out , for good measuring stick .
In other words , what some argueis one of the earliest legal structures of American imperialism appear to be base on excretion .
And think of , the jurisprudence is still on the rule book today . Five of the islands ( including Palmyra Atoll ) that the George W. Bush and Obama administrations included in the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument were the United States to protect only because the country was heroic for the bird poop on them , and created a rather shady way to get at it . In total , about70 islandswere claimed base on the practice of law . And while most of the islands stay on formally unincorporated , Palmyra is technically an unorganized , incorporated territorial dominion , significance . . .well , not much . Both the Nature Conservancy and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are now stewards of the atoll . you could check out the unique , remote spot in the Nature Conservancy video below :
Ca n’t get enough guano ? The Smithsonian ’s National Museum of American History had an entire exhibition pay to the topic . The exhibition ’s now closed in , but you could visit itsdigital vis-a-vis online .
