Rano Raraku is where the moai came from: the volcanic crater whose slopes supplied nearly every statue on Rapa Nui, with hundreds of figures still standing or reclining across the hillside, frozen at every stage from rough outline to finished form. The quarry is part of Rapa Nui National Park (UNESCO World Heritage, 1995), and since November 2017 the Chilean state has administered the park through Ma'u Henua, a Rapa Nui community organization, the result of the island's own push for control of its heritage. The people of Rapa Nui are the living community here; their festival, Tapati Rapa Nui, fills the island each February.

The park carries modern wounds honestly: an October 2022 wildfire burned through the quarry sector, charring moai and rock, and UNESCO and park conservation programs have followed with mitigation work. Scholarship has also pushed back on the old collapsed-ecology narrative about the island's past, and this entry reports the current administration, the conservation burden and the tourism pressure without the pop-history version.

Visiting

Ma'u Henua sells park tickets (10-day validity, one entry each to Rano Raraku and Orongo; CLP 40,000 Chilean residents, CLP 95,000 foreign adults). Reaching the island requires flights to Mataveri and meeting Chile's entry requirements for Rapa Nui.

Photo: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Moai_at_Rano_Raraku_%28Easter_Island%29.jpg), CC BY-SA 4.0, Mc vc.