Mangere Island (

Moriori The Moriori are the native Polynesian people of the Chatham Islands (''Rēkohu'' in Moriori; ' in Māori), New Zealand. Moriori originated from Māori settlers from the New Zealand mainland around 1500 CE. This was near the time of t ...

: ''Maung’ Rē'') is part of the

Chatham Islands The Chatham Islands ( ) (Moriori: ''Rēkohu'', 'Misty Sun'; mi, Wharekauri) are an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean about east of New Zealand's South Island. They are administered as part of New Zealand. The archipelago consists of about t ...

archipelago, located about east of

New Zealand's New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island country b ...

South Island The South Island, also officially named , is the larger of the two major islands of New Zealand in surface area, the other being the smaller but more populous North Island. It is bordered to the north by Cook Strait, to the west by the Tasman S ...

and has an area of . The island lies off the west coast of

Pitt Island Pitt Island is the second largest island in the Chatham Archipelago, New Zealand. It is called ''Rangiauria'' in Māori and ''Rangiaotea'' in ''Moriori.Government of New Zealand, Dept. of Conservation (1999) Chatham IslandsConservation Manage ...

, south-east of the main settlement in the Chathams, Waitangi, on

Chatham Island Chatham Island ( ) (Moriori: ''Rēkohu'', 'Misty Sun'; mi, Wharekauri) is by far the largest island of the Chatham Islands group, in the south Pacific Ocean off the eastern coast of New Zealand's South Island. It is said to be "halfway bet ...

. Mangere and nearby Tapuaenuku ( Little Mangere) are the eroded remains of an ancient

volcano A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates are ...

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58sea level Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical datuma standardised ...

. Forested until the 1890s, the island was largely cleared for sheep grazing.

Rabbit Rabbits, also known as bunnies or bunny rabbits, are small mammals in the family Leporidae (which also contains the hares) of the order Lagomorpha (which also contains the pikas). ''Oryctolagus cuniculus'' includes the European rabbit specie ...

s and then

cat The cat (''Felis catus'') is a domestic species of small carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticated species in the family Felidae and is commonly referred to as the domestic cat or house cat to distinguish it from the wild members of ...

s were also introduced but later died out. Farmed until 1966, the island was then purchased by the New Zealand government and gazetted as a Nature Reserve.Mangere Island restoration
(from the Department of Conservation website) The last sheep were removed in 1968 and

restoration Restoration is the act of restoring something to its original state and may refer to: * Conservation and restoration of cultural heritage ** Audio restoration ** Film restoration ** Image restoration ** Textile restoration *Restoration ecology * ...

of the island started in 1973 and is ongoing. Several

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found else ...

Chatham Island bird species have since been reintroduced to the island,

Chatham snipe The Chatham snipe or Chatham Island snipe (''Coenocorypha pusilla'') is a species of wader in the family Scolopacidae. It is endemic to the Chatham Islands of New Zealand, and is only found on a few islands in the south of the Chatham Islands gro ...

in 1970,

black robin The black robin or Chatham Island robin (Moriori: ''karure'', mi, kakaruia; ''Petroica traversi'') is an endangered bird from the Chatham Islands off the east coast of New Zealand. It is closely related to the South Island robin (''P. australi ...

Attenborough, D. 1998. ''The Life of Birds''. p. 304. BBC in 1976,

Chatham tomtit The Chatham tomtit (''Petroica macrocephala chathamensis'') is a subspecies of tomtit found on some of the smaller islands of New Zealand. It is most similar in plumage to the South Island tomtit, the nominate subspecies. The New Zealand governme ...

in 1987 and shore plover in the 1990s.

References

External links

DOC Mangere Island case study
Islands of the Chatham Islands Uninhabited islands of New Zealand Island restoration {{OutlyingNZ-geo-stub

See also

References

External links