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The Cook Islands is an island country in Polynesia, part of Oceania in the South Pacific Ocean. It consists of 15 islands whose total land area is approximately 236.7 square kilometres (91 sq mi). The Cook Islands' Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) covers 1,960,027 square kilometres (756,771 sq mi) of ocean. Avarua is its capital.
Kiritimati, also known as Christmas Island, is a Pacific Ocean atoll in the northern Line Islands. It is part of the Republic of Kiribati. The name is derived from the English word "Christmas" written in Gilbertese according to its phonology, in which the combination ti is pronounced /s/.
Aitutaki, also traditionally known as Araʻura and Utataki, is the second most-populated island in the Cook Islands, after Rarotonga. It is an "almost atoll", with fifteen islets in a lagoon adjacent to the main island. Total land area is 18.05 km2 (6.97 sq mi), and the lagoon has an area of between 50 and 74 km2. A major tourist destination, Aitutaki is the second most visited island of the Cook Islands archipelago.
In Polynesian Folklore, Hawaiki is the original home of the Polynesians, before dispersal across Polynesia. It also features as the underworld in many Māori stories.
Tetiʻaroa is an atoll in the Windward group of the Society Islands of French Polynesia, an overseas territorial collectivity of France in the Pacific Ocean. Once the vacation spot for Tahitian royalty, the islets are under a 99-year lease contracted by Marlon Brando, and are home to The Brando Resort.
Suwarrow is an island in the northern group of the Cook Islands in the south Pacific Ocean. It is about 1,300 kilometres (810 mi) south of the equator and 930 kilometres (580 mi) north-northwest of the capital island of Rarotonga.
Mangaia is the most southerly of the Cook Islands and the second largest, after Rarotonga. It is a roughly circular island, with an area of 51.8 square kilometres (20.0 sq mi), 203 kilometres (126 mi) from Rarotonga. Originally heavily populated, Mangaia's population has dropped by 75% in the last 50 years, mainly due to the decline of the pineapple industry in the 1980s and a subsequent economic crisis in 1996.
Campbell Island / Motu Ihupuku is an uninhabited subantarctic island of New Zealand, and the main island of the Campbell Island group. It covers 112.68 square kilometres (43.51 sq mi) of the group's 113.31 km2 (43.75 sq mi), and is surrounded by numerous stacks, rocks and islets like Dent Island, Folly Island, Isle de Jeanette-Marie, and Jacquemart Island, the latter being the southernmost extremity of New Zealand. The island is mountainous, rising to over 500 metres (1,640 ft) in the south. A long fiord, Perseverance Harbour, nearly bisects it, opening out to sea on the east coast.
Atafu, formerly known as the Duke of York Group, is a group of 52 coral islets within Tokelau in the south Pacific Ocean, 500 kilometres north of Samoa. With a land area of 2.5 square kilometres, it is the smallest of the three islands that constitute Tokelau. It is an atoll and surrounds a central lagoon, which covers some 15 km2 (5.8 sq mi). The atoll lies 800 kilometres south of the equator at 8° 35' South, 172° 30' West. Atafu is the northernmost area under New Zealand sovereignty.
Ātiu, also known as ʻEnuamanu, is an island of the Cook Islands archipelago, lying in the central-southern Pacific Ocean. Part of the Nga-pu-Toru, it is 214 km (133 mi) northeast of Rarotonga. The population of the 26.9 square kilometres (10.4 sq mi) island has dropped by two-thirds in the last 50 years.
The birds of New Zealand evolved into an avifauna that included many endemic species found in no other country. As an island archipelago, New Zealand accumulated bird diversity, and when Captain James Cook arrived in the 1770s he noted that the bird song was deafening.
The mewing kingfisher or Mangaia kingfisher, known locally as the tanga‘eo, is a species of bird in the Alcedinidae, or kingfisher family. It is endemic to Mangaia in the Cook Islands. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests and plantations.
A Tapere or Sub-District is a low level of traditional land subdivision on five of the Southern Cook Islands, comparable to the ahupua'a of the main Hawaiian Islands or to the kousapw of Pohnpei. Among the populated raised islands, only Mitiaro is not subdivided into tapere. The remaining Southern Cook Islands, Manuae, Palmerston and Takutea are atolls and/or uninhabited, and therefore not subject to this type of traditional subdivision. The atolls of the Northern Cook Islands are subdivided into motu, instead.
Starlicide or gull toxicant is a chemical avicide that is highly toxic to European starlings and gulls, but less toxic to other birds or to mammals such as humans and pets.
The Ascension scrub and grasslands ecoregion covers the dormant volcano, Ascension Island in the Atlantic Ocean. As well as shrubs and grasses wildlife on the island includes a range of unique flora and fauna. In particular the surrounding islets are important havens for many seabirds. However the seabird populations on Ascension Island itself have been severely affected by introduced species, especially cats, which were the subject of an eradication campaign between 2002 and 2006.
Nuʻulua is an island in Samoa. It is located in the Aleipata Islands, somewhat more than 1.3 km from the eastern end of Upolu.
The Mangaia crake is an extinct species of flightless bird in the rail family, Rallidae. It was described in 1986 from subfossil bones of late Holocene age found in caves on the island of Mangaia, in the southern Cook Islands of East Polynesia. It was placed in the then-loosely circumscribed genus Porzana, but it almost certainly does not belong to Porzana proper as understood in modern times. Rather, it most likely was one of the crakes which are now separated as genus Zapornia. While the species survived for hundreds of years of Polynesian settlement, even despite the establishment of introduced predators, at some point in the last millennium Mangaia suffered an ecosystem collapse with far-reaching consequences, the extinction of "P." rua among them.
Marae Moana is a multiple-use marine protected area created on 13 July 2017, when the Parliament of the Cook Islands passed a bill creating the largest multiple-use marine protected area in the world at the time of its passage. Marae Moana covers the Cook Islands' entire exclusive economic zone of over 1.9 million square kilometers.
The Central Polynesian tropical moist forests is a tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests ecoregion in Polynesia. It includes the northern group of the Cook Islands, the Line Islands in Kiribati, and Johnston Atoll, Jarvis Island, Palmyra Atoll, and Kingman Reef which are possessions of the United States.
References
Sources
- "Cook Islands: Mangaia - Common Myna". Pacific Cooperative Islands Initiative. 6 July 2000. Retrieved 13 February 2011.
- "Taporoporo'anga Ipukarea Society TIS". Wiser Earth. 4 October 2005. Retrieved 13 February 2011.
