Takitumu Conservation Area

Established in 1996 through an agreement between traditional Rarotongan landowners and conservation organisations, Takitumu is one of the smallest community conservation areas in the Pacific but with a disproportionate impact: it saved from extinction the Rarotonga monarch, an endemic bird that by 1989 had been reduced to barely 29 individuals through predation by introduced rats and that, thanks to an intensive predator control programme, has recovered a population several times larger.