Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme The Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme was begun in 1938 in the western Pacific ocean and was the last attempt at human colonisation within the British Empire. Conceived by Henry E. "Harry" Maude, lands commissioner of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony, and approved by Sir Harry Luke, High Commissioner of the western Pacific in Fiji, its goal was to reduce overpopulation in the southern Gilbert Islands by developing three mostly uninhabited atolls in the Phoenix Islands archipelago: A secondary goal was to enhance the British presence in the western Pacific in response to growing American influence
Endemism in the Hawaiian Islands was critical to the formulation of his theory of evolution is far exceeded in the more isolated Hawaiian Islands. The relatively short time that the existing main islands of the archipelago have been above the surface of the ocean (less than 10 million years) is only a fraction of time span over which biological colonization and evolution have occurred in the archipelago. High, volcanic islands have existed in the Pacific far longer, extending in a chain to the northwest; these once mountainous islands are now reduced to submerged banks and coral atolls. Midway Atoll, for example, formed as a volcanic