Its significance to Te Hapū o Ngāti Wheke as a site for food gathering was acknowledged with the installation in 2019 of a 9 metre tall pou whenua.

[4] Europeans briefly farmed the island in 1851, before it was turned into a quarantine station in 1875,[5] a hospital during the influenza epidemic of 1907,[2] and a small leper colony from 1906 to 1925.

[6] An attempt was made in 2015 to exhume the body, to save it from threatening erosion and to study the DNA of the disease as little was known about Pacific strains.

[7] However, two days of excavations found only a ceramic pot and glass bowl, perhaps used to hold flowers, and a large hole that had been filled with rocks, perhaps to protect the site from erosion.

He died in January 1922 on a Friday afternoon, and was buried the next day by Lyttelton priest Father Patrick Cooney.

[6] Another patient George Phillips walked off the island at low tide in 1925, crossing the mud flats to Charteris Bay where he posed as a clergyman.

[2][11] The Trust aims to restore 24 hectares (59 acres) of native forest to the island to provide a refuge for locally extinct, uncommon and threatened bird and invertebrate species of the Banks Peninsula region.

The project is unique in the way it balances the recreational use and historical features of Ōtamahua / Quail Island while re-establishing the native ecosystems, both flora and fauna.

The Trust organises fortnightly work parties on the island to undertake animal and weed pest control.

[12] The Trust's volunteers have planted more than 95,000 native trees and shrubs, established a nursery to propagate silver tussock, and eradicated all predators except mice.

This includes korimako and kererū as well as Lepidium aegrum (Banks Peninsula scurvy grass), a "nationally critical" plant.