🇺🇲United States Minor Outlying Islands

The United States Minor Outlying Islands are a scattered collection of small, mostly uninhabited islands and atolls in the Pacific and Caribbean that fall under United States jurisdiction. They have no permanent population and serve mainly as wildlife refuges, military sites and scientific outposts. Together they form a statistical grouping rather than a unified territory.

The group includes remote Pacific islands and atolls such as Baker, Howland, Jarvis, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Midway, Palmyra and Wake, along with Navassa Island in the Caribbean. Most are tiny, low-lying coral formations surrounded by rich marine ecosystems. The climate is tropical.

With no permanent inhabitants, the islands have no settled culture. Their occasional human presence consists of military personnel, researchers and refuge staff. Many are protected as part of vast marine national monuments that safeguard coral reefs and seabird colonies.

Several of the islands were claimed under 19th-century guano legislation, and some, such as Midway and Wake, became strategically vital in the Second World War. Today most are administered as national wildlife refuges and marine protected areas, valued chiefly for conservation and their historical significance.