Navassa Island
Name: U.S. Territory of Navassa Island
Location: 18 25 N, 75 01 W (between Jamaica and Haiti)
Area: approx. 2 sq. miles
Population: uninhabited
Landing Point: Lulu Bay
Political Status: Unincorporated U.S. Territory
Administration: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Department of the Interior
Travel: permission required
Map: Courtesy Rand McNally International Atlas
WEBSITE TABLE OF CONTENTS
RECENT NEWS
The U.S. Internal Revenue Service, in IRS Form
570 for 2007, omitted Navassa from the list of U.S. Insular Areas from
which income cannot be declared for purposes of a residential tax credit. The
omission will be brought to the attention of the IRS.
When the Pentagon organized it in 2002, the U.S. Northern Command received an Area of Responsibility (AOR) north of a demarcation line that went through the Windward Passage, bisecting Navassa. After three years of having the matter passed back and forth between Northern Command and Southern Command, Northern Command has now accepted responsibility for Navassa.
NAVASSA BECOMES A U.S. NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE
On August 29, 1996, the U.S. Coast Guard decommissioned the automatic navigational beacon on Navassa and notified the State Department that it no longer wanted to administer the island. Since the early 1990s, Global Positioning Satellites have made the light unnecessary to guide large cargo ships around Navassa.
An inter-agency task force transferred Navassa to the U.S. Department of the Interior. By Secretary's Order No. 3205 of January 16, 1997, the Office of Insular Affairs in the Interior Department assumed interim responsibility for the island.
A scientific expedition organized by the Ocean Conservancy in Washington DC visited Navassa from July 23 to August 5, 1998, with the support of the Interior Department. Subsequent visits have confirmed the island's unique value as a Caribbean ecosystem virtually untouched by the twentieth century.
These visits have included a 1999 visit by the U.S. Geological Survey and a 1999 mapping mission conducted by NASA's planetary geodynamics research program.
On December 3, 1999, the Secretary of the Interior signed Secretary's Order No. 3210, delegating Navassa to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as a National Wildlife Refuge. The twelve mile nautical zone around the island is a protected National Ocean Wilderness. The island and its surrounding waters are now closed to visitors.
This website maintained by David Billington.
Last updated: May 24, 2007.