Gerald Mccormack News Today

Captain Bligh made two visits to Aitutaki and left unique accounts of their vaka and tattooing, writes Rod Dixon.

An enthusiastic effort is being undertaken by a whole-hearted community group whose passion is to preserve and protect the popular and beautiful Muri Lagoon in Ngatangiia.

The inland mountains of Rarotonga maintain one of the most pristine tropical forests in the Central South Pacific. Gerald McCormack of Cook Islands Natural Heritage Trust explains why.

Rarotonga’s native flora has nearly disappeared from the island’s coast, a 150-metre ascent into the mountains required to find thriving examples of its original ecosystem. The only other place is a nursery in Matavera.

On the 30th of August, Maureen Goodwin saw two unusual birds on her inland Muri lawn. She googled and identified them as Australian Southern Lapwings rather than the Northern due to the black ‘ei kakī (collar). Over the next few days, they fed, ran over the lawn, and flew around the area, writes Gerald McCormack, director of Cook Islands Natural Heritage Trust.

A Cook Islands film-maker made a documentary on Rarotonga's mountains after watching the Kānaka Maoli protest the construction of the $US1.4 billion telescope on top of a Hawaiian mountain three years ago.

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If historical sources are to be believed, at least three islands in the Cook Islands have vanished into thin air. One of these, Tuanaki, is said to have submerged with all its occupants, as recently as 1842. By Rod Dixon.