Chalky Island (New Zealand)

Chalky Island or Te Kākahu-o-Tamatea is an island in the southwest of New Zealand, and is part of Fiordland National Park. It lies at the entrance to Chalky Inlet/Taiari, next to Preservation Inlet, at the southwestern tip of the South Island, 10 kilometres (6 mi) northwest of Puysegur Point, 15 kilometres (9 mi) southeast of West Cape, and 140 kilometres (87 mi) west of Invercargill.

Chalky Island
Chalky Island from the west
Chalky Island
Geography
LocationFiordland
Coordinates46°03′S 166°31′E
Area5.14 km2 (1.98 sq mi)
Highest elevation151 m (495 ft)
Administration
Demographics
Population0

The island was known to Māori as te kākahu-o-Tamatea (the cloak of Tamatea), as according to oral tradition it was the place where the explorer Tamatea spread his cloak out to dry after being drenched by the sea.[1] It was first charted by Captain James Cook in 1773, and was a base for sealers in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

In 1999 Chalky Island became the first nearshore island from which stoats were successfully eradicated by the New Zealand Department of Conservation, and it is now free of mammalian predators and is used as a bird sanctuary.[2] Until 2005 it was one of only four refuges of the only flightless native parrot, the critically endangered kakapo, and is still a kakapo refuge.[3] Other threatened endemic birds transferred to the island since the eradication of stoats include tieke (saddleback), mohua (yellowhead), little spotted kiwi, and orange-fronted kakariki.[4] The Te Kakahu skink is endemic to the island.[5] Dolphins, orcas, and southern right whales[6] are sometimes seen in the bay.

See also

References
  1. "Customary Use | Fiordland Marine Guardians". www.fmg.org.nz. Retrieved 22 February 2018.
  2. Hansford, Dave (July–August 2018). "The first test". New Zealand Geographic. 152: 74–91.
  3. "Updates: June to September 2005". Kakapo Recovery Program. Retrieved 12 April 2009.
  4. "Project implementation: Fiordland Island restoration programme". Department of Conservation. Retrieved 13 October 2017.
  5. "Oligosoma tekakahu Chapple, Bell, Chapple, Miller, Daugherty & Patterson, 2011". The Reptile Database. www.reptarium.cz/en/. Retrieved 18 July 2015.
  6. Archived October 16, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
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