Malden Island importance as a protected area for breeding seabirds. The island is designated as the "Malden Island Wildlife Sanctuary". In 2014 the Kiribati government established a fishing exclusion zone around each of the southern Line Islands (Caroline (commonly called Millennium), Flint, Vostok, Malden, and Starbuck). Malden Island is located south of the equator, south of Honolulu, Hawaii, and more than west of the coast of South America. The nearest land is uninhabited Starbuck Island, to the southwest. The closest inhabited place is Tongareva (Penrhyn Island), to the southwest. The nearest airport is on Kiritimati (Christmas Island), to the northwest. Other nearby
Kiritimati they are highly vulnerable to the black rat and feral cats. Given the uncertainties surrounding the introduction date and maximum population of the former, the cats seem to be the main culprits in the Kiritimati sandpiper's extinction. Given that the island was apparently settled to some extent in prehistoric times, it may already have lost bird species then. The geological data indicates that Kiritimati is quite old, was never completely underwater in the Holocene at least, and thus it might have once harbored highly distinct wetland birds. The limited overall habitat diversity on Kiritimati nonetheless limits the range of such