Long Island is located in
Queen Charlotte Sound, one of the
Marlborough Sounds
The Marlborough Sounds (Māori language, te reo Māori: ''Te Tauihu-o-te-Waka'') are an extensive network of ria, sea-drowned valleys at the northern end of the South Island of New Zealand. The Marlborough Sounds were created by a combination ...
of
New Zealand
New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...
.
James Cook
Captain (Royal Navy), Captain James Cook (7 November 1728 – 14 February 1779) was a British Royal Navy officer, explorer, and cartographer famous for his three voyages of exploration to the Pacific and Southern Oceans, conducted between 176 ...
recorded its original name as Hamote.
The island is long and thin - just over in area with a length of (the long axis being aligned north-east to south-west) and a maximum width of . It was reserved for public utility on 26 March 1926 and soon after became a farm which ran between 300 and 400 sheep until 14 January 1926 when the island became a scenic reserve. With the removal of stock in the 1930s the island has been left to regenerate back into native bush.
In April 1993, the Long Island-Kokomohua Marine reserve was created around Long island and the tiny Kokomohua islands off its northern tip. It extends offshore from the high water mark around the islands and was the first Marine reserve to be created in the South Island.
The island itself is also an important wildlife refuge and a number of species of threatened
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 ...
birds which have been reintroduced to it including
little spotted kiwi
The little spotted kiwi or little grey kiwi (''Apteryx owenii'') is a small flightless bird in the kiwi family, Apterygidae. It is the smallest of the five kiwi species, at about , about the size of a bantam. It is endemic to New Zealand, and ...
(late 1980s),
yellow-crowned parakeet
The yellow-crowned parakeet (''Cyanoramphus auriceps'') also known as the yellow-fronted parakeet is a species of parakeet endemic to the islands of New Zealand. The species is found across the main three islands of New Zealand, North Island, So ...
(2001) and
South Island saddleback
The South Island saddleback or tīeke (''Philesturnus carunculatus'') is a forest-dwelling passerine bird in the New Zealand wattlebird family which is endemic to the South Island of New Zealand. Both the North Island saddleback and this speci ...
(2005) - all these reintroductions have been successful with healthy breeding populations of each species now present on the Island.
See also
*
List of islands of New Zealand
New Zealand consists of more than six hundred islands, mainly remnants of Zealandia, a larger land mass now beneath the sea. New Zealand is the List of island countries#UN member states and states with limited recognition, sixth-largest island ...
*
List of islands
This is a list of the lists of islands in the world grouped by country, by continent, by body of water
A body of water or waterbody is any significant accumulation of water on the surface of Earth or another planet. The term most often refer ...
*
Desert island
An uninhabited island, desert island, or deserted island, is an island, islet or atoll which lacks permanent human population. Uninhabited islands are often depicted in films or stories about shipwrecked people, and are also used as stereotypes ...
References
Uninhabited islands of New Zealand
Islands of the Marlborough Sounds
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