The Piper Islands National Park is a national park in Far North Queensland

Far North Queensland

Far North Queensland, or FNQ, is the northernmost part of the Australian state of Queensland. The region, which contains a large section of the Tropical North Queensland area, stretches from the city of Cairns north to the Torres Strait...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

. It lies 1977 km northwest of Brisbane. It comprises four small islands lying on the inner northern Great Barrier Reef

Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef is the world'slargest reef system composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over 2,600 kilometres over an area of approximately...

 off the eastern coast of the Cape York Peninsula

Cape York Peninsula

Cape York Peninsula is a large remote peninsula located in Far North Queensland at the tip of the state of Queensland, Australia, the largest unspoilt wilderness in northern Australia and one of the last remaining wilderness areas on Earth...

 in Temple Bay, between Cape Grenville

Cape Grenville

Cape Grenville , is a small, east-facing promontory along the Queensland, Australia coast of Cape York Peninsula. It lies between Shelburne Bay to the north and Temple Bay to the south. The nearest significant settlement is Weipa, Queensland, along the western coast of Cape York.The northern part...

 and Fair Cape.

Birds

The islands have been identified by BirdLife International

BirdLife International

BirdLife International is a global Partnership of conservation organisations that strives to conserve birds, their habitats and global biodiversity, working with people towards sustainability in the use of natural resources...

 as an Important Bird Area

Important Bird Area

An Important Bird Area is an area recognized as being globally important habitat for the conservation of bird populations. Currently there are about 10,000 IBAs worldwide. The program was developed and sites are identified by BirdLife International...

 (IBA) because they have supported over 1% of the world populations of Pied Imperial Pigeons (with up to 4000 nests) and Black Noddies

Black Noddy

The Black Noddy or White-capped Noddy is a seabird from the tern family. It resembles the closely related Brown or Common Noddy , but is smaller with darker plumage, a whiter cap, a longer, straighter beak and shorter tail...

 (up to 7500 nests).

Islands

• Baird Island (1 ha) – coral
  Coral
  Corals are marine animals in class Anthozoa of phylum Cnidaria typically living in compact colonies of many identical individual "polyps". The group includes the important reef builders that inhabit tropical oceans and secrete calcium carbonate to form a hard skeleton.A coral "head" is a colony of...
  
   and shingle cay
  Cay
  A cay , also spelled caye or key, is a small, low-elevation, sandy island formed on the surface of coral reefs. Cays occur in tropical environments throughout the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans , where they provide habitable and agricultural land for hundreds of thousands of people...
  
   with mangrove
  Mangrove
  Mangroves are various kinds of trees up to medium height and shrubs that grow in saline coastal sediment habitats in the tropics and subtropics – mainly between latitudes N and S...
  
  s (dominated by Rhizophora stylosa and Avicennia marina
  Avicennia marina
  Avicennia marina, commonly known as grey mangrove or white mangrove, is a species of mangrove tree classified in the plant family Acanthaceae...
  
  ) growing to a canopy height of 5 m
• Beesley Island (2.4 ha) – cay with grass
  Grass
  Grasses, or more technically graminoids, are monocotyledonous, usually herbaceous plants with narrow leaves growing from the base. They include the "true grasses", of the Poaceae family, as well as the sedges and the rushes . The true grasses include cereals, bamboo and the grasses of lawns ...
  
  es and herb
  Herbaceous plant
  A herbaceous plant is a plant that has leaves and stems that die down at the end of the growing season to the soil level. They have no persistent woody stem above ground...
  
  s, sharing the same reef as Baird Island
• Farmer Island (7 ha) – cay with a grass and shrub
  Shrub
  A shrub or bush is distinguished from a tree by its multiple stems and shorter height, usually under 5–6 m tall. A large number of plants may become either shrubs or trees, depending on the growing conditions they experience...
  
   exterior and a wooded interior dominated by Pisonia grandis
  Pisonia grandis
  Pisonia grandis is a species of flowering tree in the Bougainvillea family, Nyctaginaceae.-Description:The tree has broad, thin leaves, smooth bark and bears clusters of green sweet-smelling flowers that mature into sticky barbed seeds....
  
  forest up to 4 m in height
• Fisher Island (3 ha) – coral shingle cay with shrubs and mangroves, sharing the same reef as Fisher Island