Mangere Island
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Mangere Island is part of the Chatham Islands archipelago, located 800 km east of New Zealand's South Island and has an area of 113 hectares. The island lies off the west coast of Pitt Island, 45 km southeast of the main settlement in the Chathams, Waitangi, on Chatham Island.
Mangere and nearby Tapuaenunku (Little Mangere) are the eroded remains of an acient volcano of pliocene age. The islands highest point, Whakapa, is at 292 metres the highest point in the Chathams group.
Forested until the 1890's, the island was largely cleared for sheep grazing. Rabbits 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 in 1967. The last sheep were removed in 1968 and restoration of the island started in 1973 and is ongoing. Several endemic Chatham Island bird species have since been reintroduced to the island, Chatham Island snipe in 1970, black robin in 1976, Chatham Island tomtit in 1987 and New Zealand shore plover in the 1990's.
