The island of Makira (previously known as San Cristóbal) is the largest island of

Makira-Ulawa Province Makira-Ulawa Province is one of the nine provinces of Solomon Islands. It is mainly made up of the island of the same name, located east of Guadalcanal. The largest city and capital is Kirakira, in the north of Makira. The province is best know ...

Solomon Islands Solomon Islands, also known simply as the Solomons,John Prados, ''Islands of Destiny'', Dutton Caliber, 2012, p,20 and passim is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 1000 smaller islands in Melanesia, part of Oceania, t ...

. It is third most populous of the Solomon Islands after

Malaita Malaita is the primary island of Malaita Province in Solomon Islands. Malaita is the most populous island of the Solomon Islands, with a population of 161,832 as of 2021, or more than a third of the entire national population. It is also the se ...

and

Guadalcanal Guadalcanal (; indigenous name: ''Isatabu'') is the principal island in Guadalcanal Province of Solomon Islands, located in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, northeast of Australia. It is the largest island in the Solomons by area and the second- ...

, with a population of 55,126 as of 2020. The island is located east of

and south of

. The largest and capital city is Kirakira.

History

The first recorded sighting by Europeans of Makira was by the Spanish expedition of

Álvaro de Mendaña Álvaro or Álvar (, , ) is a Spanish, Galician and Portuguese male given name and surname of Germanic Visigothic origin. The patronymic surname derived from this name is Álvarez. Given name Artists * Álvaro Carrillo, Afro-Mexican songwrit ...

in June 1568. More precisely the sighting and also landing in San Cristóbal was due to a local voyage that set out from

in a small boat, in the accounts the

brigantine A brigantine is a two-masted sailing vessel with a fully square-rigged foremast and at least two sails on the main mast: a square topsail and a gaff sail mainsail (behind the mast). The main mast is the second and taller of the two masts. Ol ...

''Santiago'', commanded by

Alférez In medieval Iberia, an ''alférez'' (, ) or ''alferes'' (, ) was a high-ranking official in the household of a king or magnate. The term is derived from the Arabic ('' al-fāris''), meaning "knight" or "cavalier", and it was commonly Latinised ...

Hernando Enriquez and having

Hernán Gallego Hernán is a Spanish masculine given name, originating from Germanic Hernan in the Visigoth culture in Spain. It is the Latinized version of the compound name ''Fard-nanth'', which seems to mean "gentle traveler" or "spiritual traveler". The House ...

as pilot. They charted it as ''San Cristóbal''.Brand, Donald D. ''The Pacific Basin: A History of its Geographical Explorations'' The American Geographical Society, New York, 1967, p.133.

Education

The Stuyvenberg Rural Training Centre is a rural

boarding Boarding may refer to: *Boarding, used in the sense of "room and board", i.e. lodging and meals as in a: **Boarding house **Boarding school *Boarding (horses) (also known as a livery yard, livery stable, or boarding stable), is a stable where hor ...

centre of

vocational education Vocational education is education that prepares people for a skilled craft. Vocational education can also be seen as that type of education given to an individual to prepare that individual to be gainfully employed or self employed with req ...

by the Society of Mary, located on the north coast of eastern Makira.

Environment

A 182,550 ha tract of largely forested land encompassing the eastern part of the island has been identified by

BirdLife International BirdLife International is a global partnership of non-governmental organizations that strives to conserve birds and their habitats. BirdLife International's priorities include preventing extinction of bird species, identifying and safeguarding i ...

as an

Important Bird Area An Important Bird and Biodiversity Area (IBA) is an area identified using an internationally agreed set of criteria as being globally important for the conservation of bird populations. IBA was developed and sites are identified by BirdLife Int ...

(IBA) because it supports populations of several

threatened A threatened species is any species (including animals, plants and fungi) which is vulnerable to extinction in the near future. Species that are threatened are sometimes characterised by the population dynamics measure of ''critical depensatio ...

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 ...

bird species. The site extends from the rocky cliffs of the coast to the island's central Bauro Highlands, including the catchments of the Warihito and Raro Rivers, reaching an altitude of 1,200 m, and consisting largely of

tropical rainforest Tropical rainforests are dense and warm rainforests with high rainfall typically found between 10° north and south of the Equator. They are a subset of the tropical forest biome that occurs roughly within the 28° latitudes (in the torrid zo ...

. The landscape is rugged, with steep-sided valleys, many streams and waterfalls, and small perched floodplains. Potential threats to the environment are

logging Logging is the process of cutting, processing, and moving trees to a location for transport. It may include skidder, skidding, on-site processing, and loading of trees or trunk (botany), logs onto logging truck, trucksinvasive species An invasive species is an introduced species that harms its new environment. Invasive species adversely affect habitats and bioregions, causing ecological, environmental, and/or economic damage. The term can also be used for native spec ...

and human

population growth Population growth is the increase in the number of people in a population or dispersed group. The World population, global population has grown from 1 billion in 1800 to 8.2 billion in 2025. Actual global human population growth amounts to aroun ...

Birds

Significant birds include

Melanesian scrubfowl The Melanesian scrubfowl or Melanesian megapode (''Megapodius eremita'') is a megapode species that is endemic to islands within Melanesia. The Melanesian scrubfowl has a unique strategy of egg incubation in which it relies on environmental heat sou ...

, yellow-legged pigeons, crested cuckoo-doves, red-knobbed and

chestnut-bellied imperial pigeon The chestnut-bellied imperial pigeon (''Ducula brenchleyi'') is a species of bird in the family Columbidae. It is endemic to the southern Solomon Islands. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests and subtropical or ...

white-headed fruit dove The white-headed fruit dove (''Ptilinopus eugeniae'') is a species of bird in the pigeon family Columbidae. It was described by the English ornithologist John Gould in 1856, and the specific name ''eugeniae'' honours the French empress Eugéni ...

s, Makira boobooks,

pied goshawk The pied goshawk (''Tachyspiza albogularis'') is a species of bird of prey in the family Accipitridae. It is found on Bougainville Island and the Solomon Islands. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forest and subtropic ...

s, Sanford's sea eagles, San Cristobal dwarf kingfishers, Meek's and duchess lorikeets, yellow-bibbed lories, green pygmy-parrots, Makira honeyeaters, sooty myzomelas,

long-tailed triller The long-tailed triller (''Lalage leucopyga'') is a species of bird in the family Campephagidae. It is found in New Caledonia, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu. The Norfolk Island subspecies of the long-tailed triller, the Norfolk triller, has become ...

s, dusky fantails, Makira flycatchers, white-collared and Makira monarchs, island leaf-warblers, shade bush warblers, grey-throated white-eyes, Makira starlings, Makira thrushes and

mottled flowerpecker The mottled flowerpecker or white-mottled flowerpecker (''Dicaeum tristrami'') is a species of bird in the family Dicaeidae. It is endemic to Makira in the Solomon Islands. It inhabits primary forest and secondary growth In botany, secondary ...

s. The Makira woodhen, or moorhen, has not been seen since 1953; the thick-billed ground dove has not been recorded since 1927 and is presumed extinct.

Other biota

Five species of restricted-range

bat Bats are flying mammals of the order Chiroptera (). With their forelimbs adapted as wings, they are the only mammals capable of true and sustained flight. Bats are more agile in flight than most birds, flying with their very long spread-out ...

s have been recorded, as well as a possibly new species of giant rat (''

Solomys ''Solomys'' is a genus of rodent in the family Muridae. These large rats, which are all seriously Threatened species, threatened (one already extinct), are native to the Solomon Islands (archipelago), Solomon Islands. It contains the following s ...

''). There are two species of endemic fig (''

Ficus ''Ficus'' ( or ) is a genus of about 850 species of woody trees, shrubs, vines, epiphytes and hemiepiphytes in the family (biology), family Moraceae. Collectively known as fig trees or figs, they are native throughout the tropics with a few spe ...

'').

Notable people

* Doreen Kuper - former Honorary Consul to New Zealand *

John Saunana John Selwyn Saunana, OBE (1945 – April 30, 2013) was a Solomon Islands writer and politician, known for his 1980 novel '' The Alternative'', the first novel ever published by a Solomon Islander. Early life and education Saunana was born in 1945 ...

- novelist, poet, and politician

Gallery

File:Kirakira Local Dwellings.JPG, Some of the local houses next to the beach at Kirakira File:Kirakira Beach at Sunset.JPG, A Kirakira beach at sunset

References

External links

* {{authority control Islands of the Solomon Islands Important Bird Areas of the Solomon Islands