Tiritiri Matangi Island

This guide to Tiritiri Matangi Island in Auckland's harbour begins with the 1948 rediscovery of the takahe, a bird thought extinct for half a century, then turns to the island itself: bare, grazed pasture by the 1970s, its native forest almost entirely gone. It follows the volunteers, schoolchildren and families who came out by ferry through the 1980s to replant it by hand, tree by tree. Look closely at the bush along the track for what eventually returned to live in it.