Mangere Island (

Moriori The Moriori are the first settlers of the Chatham Islands ( in Moriori language, Moriori; in Māori language, Māori). Moriori are Polynesians who came from the New Zealand mainland around 1500 AD, which was close to the time of the ...

: ) is part of the

Chatham Islands The Chatham Islands ( ; Moriori language, Moriori: , 'Misty Sun'; ) are an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean about east of New Zealand's South Island, administered as part of New Zealand, and consisting of about 10 islands within an approxima ...

archipelago, located about east of New Zealand's

South Island The South Island ( , 'the waters of Pounamu, Greenstone') is the largest of the three major islands of New Zealand by surface area, the others being the smaller but more populous North Island and Stewart Island. It is bordered to the north by ...

and has an area of . The island lies off the west coast of Pitt Island, south-east of the main settlement in the Chathams, Waitangi, on

Chatham Island Chatham Island ( ) ( Moriori: , 'Misty Sun'; ) is 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 between the equator and the pole, a ...

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

volcano A volcano is commonly defined as a vent or fissure 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 oft ...

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch (geology), epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.33 to 2.58sea level Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an mean, average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal Body of water, bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical ...

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

Rabbit Rabbits are small mammals in the family Leporidae (which also includes the hares), which is in the order Lagomorpha (which also includes pikas). They are familiar throughout the world as a small herbivore, a prey animal, a domesticated ...

s and then cats 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 of the island started in 1973 and is ongoing. Several

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found only 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 foun ...

Chatham Island bird species have since been reintroduced to the island, Chatham snipe in 1970,

black robin The black robin or Chatham Island robin (Moriori language, Moriori: , ; ''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. australis'') ...

Attenborough, D. 1998. ''The Life of Birds''. p. 304. BBC in 1976, Chatham tomtit in 1987 and

shore plover The shore plover (, Moriori: , ''Charadrius novaeseelandiae''), also known as the shore dotterel, is a small plover endemic to New Zealand. Once found all around the New Zealand coast, it is now restricted to a few offshore islands. It is one ...

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