The importance of these islands for Aboriginal peoples’ connection to country endures. They have continued to be important to Aboriginal peoples in recent millennia, with evidence that some were visited or used by Aboriginal groups in the region. The islands are rich in cultural and heritage values, with use by Aboriginal peoples spanning up to 50,000 years. Visitors should avoid walking through vegetated areas to prevent collapsing burrows or crushing chicks. During the day the adult birds are out hunting and return to their burrows in the evening to feed their chicks. They visit from July onwards to prepare a burrow for nesting when November arrives. This includes critically endangered birds such as the curlew sandpiper, great knot, eastern curlew and the Northern Siberian subspecies of bar-tailed godwit.Īround one million wedge-tailed shearwaters migrate to the area each year, and form significant breeding colonies on Serrurier (Long), Bessieres, Airlie, Locker, North East Regnard, and the Muiron Islands. The islands also host high numbers of migratory and resident shorebirds, and significant colonies of nesting seabirds.

They also support priority ecological communities, priority flora, and increasingly rare pristine vegetation types.įour species of marine turtle (green, loggerhead, hawksbill and flatback) nest on the islands, with major nesting beaches on North Muiron, South Muiron, Thevenard, Serrurier (Long), Sholl and the Lowendal Islands, as well as the coastal islands from Cape Preston to Locker Island. Located within a national biodiversity hotspot, the islands have high conservation value and provide a refuge for threatened and priority species, relatively free from the threats like introduced predators, light or noise pollution, development, bushfires and other disturbances. The remaining islands are mainly unallocated Crown land but many are proposed to become nature reserves in the near future. These remote islands have immense natural, cultural, and heritage value and many of the islands are protected as nature reserves. The Pilbara Islands are a group of over 170 islands, islets, rocks and cays that lie between the bottom of Exmouth Gulf and the Regnard Islands near Cape Preston.

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