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| Mana Island is the smaller of two islands that lie off the southwest coast of the North Island of New Zealand (the larger is Kapiti Island). The island’s name is an abbreviation of Te Mana o Kupe, "the mana of Kupe".
Mana Island is a three-kilometre long, 2.17 square kilometre table, with cliffs covering much of its coast and a plateau occupying much of the centre. It lies three kilometres off the North Island coast in the Tasman Sea, west of the city of Porirua and to the south of the entrance to Porirua Harbour.
Mana was occupied by Maori from the 14th century. In the early 1820s, the Ngati Toa iwi, led by Te Rauparaha established bases on Mana.
European occupation began 1830s with a whaling station, and bush was cleared for an early sheep farm. A lighthouse was built to the north in 1863, but shipwrecks were caused due to confusion between this light and Pencarrow light at the entrance to Wellington Harbour, and the Mana lighthouse was removed to Cape Egmont in Taranaki in 1877, where it still stands.
Mana Island became Crown property in 1865, and continued as a farming site until the 1960s. It was then used as a site for raising exotic breeds of sheep. A suspected outbreak of scrapie (a very contagious and debilitating condition) resulted in all the sheep being slaughtered in the mid 1980s. The New Zealand Department of Conservation then took over the site and started to restore its forests, with almost 400,000 trees being planted so far. In 1989/90 mice were eradicated from the island. Subsequently, a wetland on the island has been restored and a number of rare and endangered bird, lizard and plant species transferred to Mana.
The island is now a scientific reserve with many native species considered rare on the mainland. Notable species now on the island include the Cook Strait giant weta, Shore Plover,North Island robin, takahe, Wellington green gecko, yellow crowned parakeet, and brown teal. The most recent example was the critically endangered Wellington speargrass weevil from the Wellington South Coast in 2006. The restoration programme has been characterised by a high level of community involvement, led by groups such as the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society of New Zealand and the Friends of Mana Island.
Recent projects have included the successful translocations to the island of diving petrels and fairy prion chicks with the progeny of several of the tranferees later successfully fledging - the first to do so on Mana for many centuries. The first 40 chicks of a third burrowing seabird, the fluttering shearwater, were transferred to the island in January 2006 with a further 200 scheduled over the next two years. These species are an important part of the restoration of the island because of their nutrient inflows (free fertilizer) and the habitats their burrows provide for reptiles and invertebrates.
Planned projects include the transfer to the island of a wide range of other species, many of which are rare and endangered. Notable amongst these will be the tuatara, the little spotted kiwi, a subspecies of the carnivorous powelliphanta snail, and a range of threatened plants endemic to the Wellington region.
There have been attempts to start a Gannet colony on Mana island, with conservationists building a fake colony of birds out of concrete, and installing microphones that make Gannet sounds in the hope that real ones will be attracted. As of 2006, these attempts have been unsuccessful.
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