Humans come back to Navassa now and then. In 1917, a 162-foot lighthouse was built there, in part to light the approach to Panama and the new canal. A lighthouse keeper lived there until 1929, when an automatic beacon was installed. During World War II, an observation post was erected by the Navy. No Nazis were ever sighted.

Responsibility for Navassa has shifted from one government agency to another, each uncertain of who should be in charge of our giant guano lump. For a while Navassa was considered part of the Guantánamo naval base. Then it was part of the Coast Guard. Since 1976, it has been lodged in the Department of the Interior, an unlikely destination for an island that could not be less internal.

There the story would appear to end, the forlorn tale of the little island that couldn’t. But just as Navassa survived war, piracy and the rise and fall of empires, so it appears perfectly able to survive bureaucracy. Now new explorers are visiting. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has undertaken a “remote sensing experiment” to create a detailed topographical map of Navassa that will help monitor the island’s reaction to climate change, hurricanes and the rise of water levels around the world. This seems a fitting result for a place that was never all that comfortably on the map in the first place.

This island, so inhospitable to humans, is in its own way a natural paradise. Navassa may offer the most pristine Caribbean environment left, and in 1999 it was declared a National Wildlife Refuge. A huge number of plant and animal species can be found within its three square miles. Recent investigations have shown the number of known species, once thought to be 150, is closer to 650. Many of these species — lizards, insects and trees — exist nowhere else. One solitary palm, thought to have disappeared in 1928, appears to be the last of its kind. A lonely predicament; but like Navassa, it survives.

These efforts to learn more about Navassa’s environment are not universally appreciated. Many Haitians, resentful of the American interest in Navassa, believe that the science is simply a cover for the same old greed. A lively topic of conversation in Haiti is that the United States has discovered gold on Navassa, or perhaps uranium, or even the gateway to Atlantis, the legendary lost civilization. In 1989, some Haitians occupied Navassa, albeit very briefly. After a couple of hours, they left it to the lizards.

What lies ahead for this remote outpost of American sovereignty? On the 150th anniversary of the year Navassa came into American possession, it feels a bit unseemly to see the world’s richest nation entangled in a dispute with the poorest nation in our hemisphere over a remote rock that no one can live on.