Ellis Island the region. The oyster beds remained a major source of food for nearly three centuries. Landfilling to build the railyards of the Lehigh Valley Railroad and the Central Railroad of New Jersey eventually obliterated the oyster beds, engulfed one island, and brought the shoreline much closer to the others. During the colonial period, Little Oyster Island was known as Dyre's, then Bucking Island. In the 1760s, after some pirates were hanged from one of the island's scrubby trees, it became known as Gibbet Island. It was acquired by Samuel Ellis, a colonial New Yorker and merchant possibly from Wales, around
Birnie Island Kiribati in 1979 when the country gained independence. The US gave up its claim in favor of Kiribati in the 1979 Treaty of Tarawa. Birnie is rarely visited today, though a New-Zealand funded scientific expedition to rid the island of rats and other invasive animal species was carried out in 2008. Birnie Island Birnie Island is a small, uninhabited coral island, 20 hectares in area, part of the Phoenix Island group, that is part of the Republic of Kiribati. It is located about 100 km SE of Kanton Island and 90 km WNW of Rawaki Island, formerly known as Phoenix