Hihi volunteer needed
Date posted: 18-Oct-2018
Would you like to volunteer with the Island's hihi team and learn from them how ..
2019 Calendars now available
Date posted: 05-Sep-2018
The new 2019 calendars are now available and this year's is better than ever! Th..
Winners of kokako photo competition
Date posted: 02-Sep-2018
The stunning winning photographs from those submitted to the competition as part..
Kokako Celebration
Date posted: 21-Jul-2018
(https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-great-kokako-story-celebrating-21-years-..
Kokako Photographic Competition
Date posted: 20-Jul-2018
KÅKAKO PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPETITION
Celebrating 21 years on Tiritiri Matangi
To ce..
New monitoring reports published
Date posted: 19-Jul-2018
Reports on monitoring studies carried out over the past year have now been poste..
2018 Concert coming up soon
Date posted: 15-Feb-2018
Our 2018 concert will feature an afternoon of light classics and jazz courtesy of the Auckland Ph..
Wetapunga talk coming soon
Date posted: 05-Feb-2018
For the Social on 19 March the speaker will be Ben Goodwin of Auckland Zoo, who will talk about t..
Rat caught and now takahe released from pens
Date posted: 28-Jan-2018
Thankfully DOC staff Andre de Graaf and Polly Hall and their assistants have trapped the rat whic..
Your Christmas Shopping for a Song
Date posted: 04-Dec-2017
Aka - The Grand Christmas Shopping Expedition to Tiritiri Matangi Island Shop
Dreading..
About
Tiritiri Matangi ('a place tossed by the wind') was settled by the Kawerau-A-Maki tribe. They built the pa Tiritiri Matangi, from which the island takes its name. Europeans arrived in the mid 1850s. The island was farmed continuously until the 1970s, when the Hauraki Gulf Maritime Park Board was given responsibility for Tiritiri Matangi and the last of the stock removed. Now the Department of Conservation administers Tiritiri Matangi as a scientific reserve, protecting the island for its wildlife, conservation, scientific, recreational and historical values.
A Beacon of Conservation
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Tiritiri Matangi Island is the dream that came true. Thirty-five years ago the 220-hectare island was a big green paddock. The farming lease had expired, the island had been returned to the people as a recreation reserve, but natural regeneration faltered as rats, rank grasses and bracken took over.
Then a bold group of people conceived an imaginative plan – to replant the island’s original forest and create a sanctuary for endangered birds and reptiles. The sanctuary would also be open to all. Such ideas were, for their time, revolutionary – that the island, often affectionately known as ‘Tiri’, might become a symbol for conservation in action. That conservation might be uplifted here from the sole charge of scientists and professionals and carried forward by the citizens of Auckland. Thousands of volunteers responded, and replanted a forest.
Birds, including many endangered species, have repopulated that forest and people by the thousands now visit Tiritiri Matangi Island, the first of New Zealand’s open sanctuaries. In retrospect it is easy to say that the time for such a bold revolution was right. As with any good idea, it was simple, unexpected and credible – it caught people’s imagination, it offered a goal and an unfolding story. The lighthouse island that once housed the brightest light in the southern hemisphere has brightened again, but this time as a beacon of conservation in action.
Click on the link below to view the report. For a more detailed history, go to our History page >>.
Tiritiri Matangi awarded as 1 of the top 25 ecological restoration projects in Australasia
Tiritiri Matangi has been recognised as one of the top 25 ecological restoration projects in Australasia, as selected by a cross-Tasman panel set up by the journal Ecological Management & Restoration and the Ecological Society of Australia. The host for the 'top 25 search' is the Global Restoration Network - an online hub set up by the Society for Ecological Restoration International (SERI) to provide information on ecological restoration. The launch of the project was part of the preparations for SERI's international conference to be held in Perth in August 2009, the first time the international conference will be held in the southern hemisphere.
Photography by John Stewart ©