Long Island is located in Queen Charlotte Sound, one of the Marlborough Sounds of New Zealand.^[1] James Cook recorded its original name as Hamote.^[2]

The island is long and thin - just over 1.41 square kilometres (0.54 sq mi) in area with a length of 4 km (2.5 mi) (the long axis being aligned north-east to south-west) and a maximum width of 1 km (0.62 mi). It was reserved for public utility on 26 March 1926 and soon after became a farm which ran between 300 and 400 sheep until 14 January 1926 when the island became a scenic reserve.^[3] With the removal of stock in the 1930s the island has been left to regenerate back into native bush.

In April 1993, the Long Island-Kokomohua Marine reserve was created around Long island and the tiny Kokomohua islands off its northern tip.^[4] It extends 460 metres (1,510 ft) offshore from the high water mark around the islands and was the first Marine reserve to be created in the South Island.^[1] The island itself is also an important wildlife refuge and a number of species of threatened endemic birds which have been reintroduced to it including little spotted kiwi (late 1980s), yellow-crowned parakeet (2001) and South Island saddleback (2005) - all these reintroductions have been successful with healthy breeding populations of each species now present on the Island.^[5][6]

• List of islands of New Zealand
• List of islands
• Desert island