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 there are no truly native land mammals and only one native land bird – Kiribati's endemic reed-warbler, the bokikokiko ("Acrocephalus aequinoctialis"). The 1957 attempt to introduce the endangered Rimitara lorikeet ("Vini kuhlii") has largely failed; a few birds seem to linger on, but the lack of abundant coconut palm forest, on which this tiny parrot depends, makes Kiritimati a suboptimal habitat for this species. The natural vegetation on Kiritimati consists mostly of low shrubland and grassland. What little woodland exists is mainly open coconut palm ("Cocos nucifera") plantation. There are three small woods of catchbird trees ("Pisonia grandis"), at Southeast