Posted
on December 25, 2014
For
centuries, this island in the South Pacific had very little
interference from people.
The
English man who named it didn't mess with it. He didn't even land on
it! He sailed right on by on this date in 1643. Guess why he named it
Christmas Island?
The
English and Dutch navigators had it on their navigational charts from
then on, but the small island, which is about the size of a city,
didn't make it onto maps until 1666. Finally, in 1688, another
English navigator landed on the island. He found it uninhabited.
Still,
no one moved there, no one explored the island or exploited its
resources, until the mid-1800s. By the late 1800s, Great Britain
annexed the island (grabbed control of it from absolutely nobody, for
practically no reason except “because we can!”), and a small
settlement was created there to collect timber and supplies for the
businesses springing up on an entirely different island!
The
one resource...
I
guess we can assume, from this lack of interest in the island, that
there were not golden nuggets and sparkling diamonds lying around.
Instead, what WAS lying around was a lot of bird poop.
Bird
poop is generally called guano, along with bats and seals and other
sea creatures. Guano is a great source for phosphates and other
minerals that are important to growing plants. People began to mine
the guano on Christmas Island, to be used mostly in fertilizer, in
the 1890s.
And
the winners are...
All
that NOT being messed with for all those centuries means that there
is a lot of endemism on the island. That means that there are an
unusual number of unique plant and animal species not seen anywhere
else in the world!
So,
obviously, those particular species benefitted from the centuries of
isolation. But also, many biologists and nature lovers are interested in the the
lifeforms found on the island.
By the way, Christmas Island is now a territory of Australia.
One of the best, most Christmas-y critters on Christmas Island:
 |
| During Red Crab migration, some roads are closed to protect the crabs. |
 |
| Can you see why they closed this road? |
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ahead:
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