Waikoko wetland

Waikoko wetland was developed by the Department of Conservation in 1998 on Mana Island, on the site of a wetland that existed before the island was developed as a farm in 1832.

The name Waikoko or “water of many tui [koko]” suggests the area was once full of flowering harakeke (flax), surrounded by kowhai trees and enlivened with the song of tui. Tui bones were the most abundant of bird remains found in an archaeological excavation of a 15th century midden site by the stream mouth.

Waikoko wetland, Mana Island

It was once also a habitat for paradise shelduck, grey duck, black shag, fernbird, and banded rail. Ancient pollen samples collected from the site indicate that sedges dominated the wetland here before the island was first farmed. A network of drains and close grazing by sheep and cattle over the ensuing 150 years obliterated most traces of the original wetland.

Paradoxically, the few patches of harakeke planted around the margins of the wetland in the 1970s proved to be ideal habitat for the nationally-threatened goldstripe gecko, which is now abundant here. The wetland now provides habitat for brown teal and a range of threatened wetland plants from the Cook Strait and Wellington ecological districts.