Anthropogenic stressors such as coastal development, dynamite fishing, cyanide fishing, overexploitation of resources and marine pollution, have left 58% percent of the world's reefs under threat.
The lower-lying areas of the island were mainly covered by a woodland of Phylica arborea trees mixed with ferns before the vegetation was devastated by a combination of wood-cutting, anthropogenic wildfire and grazing by feral cattle, and became replaced by exotic grassland.
In January of that year the Marshall Institute published a review she had written for them, "Are Human Activities Causing Global Warming?" disputing the IPCC Second Assessment Report and arguing that "predictions of an anthropogenic global warming have been greatly exaggerated, and that the human contribution to global warming over the course of the 21st century will be less than one degree Celsius and probably only a few tenths of a degree."