The Intrepid Foundation’s newest partner in Australia, Rainforest Rescue, is working with Traditional Owners to protect and restore threatened parts of the Daintree Rainforest.
‘Pull on your cassowary suit and put yourself in their prehistoric, proverbial shoes.’
That’s what Rainforest Rescue’s communications manager, Mark Cox, tells me when I ask why the Daintree Rainforest’s current national park protection isn’t enough. I didn’t have a cassowary suit or cassowary shoes on hand, but I imagined I did.
‘They’ve wandered around the rainforest for millions of years doing their thing. Then recently humans have come along and turned their world upside down.
‘Over the last 50 years, humans have put national park boundaries in place, which is wonderful, but the native animals – including the flightless, colourful-headed cassowary – don’t understand these invisible lines. So, more protections are needed, especially in the areas bordering the national park.’
Mark is, of course, talking about the Daintree Rainforest (Kaba Kada in the Kuku-Yalanji Language of its Traditional Owners), the world’s oldest living tropical rainforest with an estimated 180 million years behind it.
Found in Australia’s Far North Queensland, fringed by long white beaches extending to the Great Barrier Reef, the Daintree is one of nature’s finest works.
Or, as Sir David Attenborough once put it, ‘the most extraordinary place on Earth.’
Step into what feels like another world entirely – totally awash in green with ancient towering trees above and vines intertwining between anything they can latch onto – and you’ll get it, too. With or without a cassowary suit.
The Daintree is part of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, and much of it is protected under national park laws, so you’d be forgiven for assuming the 180-million-year-old beauty didn’t have a worry in the world.
But unfortunately, that isn’t the case.
The team at Rainforest Rescue, the Intrepid Foundation partner on a mission to restore and expand the rainforest universally recognised for its biodiversity, explains that it’s still insufficiently protected, with parts of the Daintree lowlands at greatest risk.
Decades of development and deforestation
Alongside climate change and invasive species, rainforest fragmentation is one of the most concerning threats to the Daintree.
Ten years before the area received its World Heritage listing in 1988, the Daintree was subjected to mass subdivision for residential development and agriculture, and blocks of land were sold to private owners like farmers, developers and businesses. Luckily, most of the 1100 land blocks weren’t built upon or developed in that time. But the move left the rainforest fragmented, a tapestry of isolated pieces.
Mark says those fragments of rainforest that aren’t connected to the rest slowly degrade and become less biodiverse.
‘It’s all broken up on the edges. There are bits everywhere, and we want to stitch those pieces back together,’ Mark says.
Putting the pieces of the Daintree tapestry back together is about more than making it whole again, it’s also about connecting nature corridors for wildlife to roam and live freely. There are 142 rare, threatened and endangered species calling the Daintree home, including the southern cassowary and Bennett’s Tree Kangaroo.
Mark says, ‘You need these strategically placed corridors for wildlife to move through safely.’
Read more: Protecting wildlife corridors from Yellowstone to the Yukon
Reclaiming the land
Australia’s wild places receive very little government funding for biodiversity programs, so the Rainforest Rescue team have taken matters into their own hands. Since 1999, they’ve protected 46 pockets of rainforest in Australia, equating to more than two million square metres of rescued rainforest, and planted more than 400,000 native trees.
They’ve even gifted some of the restored properties back to the state government to extend official national park boundaries.
Rainforest Rescue has a formally recognised agreement with Jabalbina Yalanji Aboriginal Corporation, who represent the local Yalanji people and are dedicated to protecting Culture and Country in the traditional way.
Rainforest Rescue prioritise working alongside the Traditional Owners of the land to help heal the rainforest.
‘We have an authentic connection with the Eastern Kuku Yalanji people – the longest-standing custodians of the Daintree,’ says Kristin Canning, Rainforest Rescue’s partnerships director. ‘We learn from each other and share experiences, and it’s an honour and a privilege to be able to deepen our Cultural understanding.’
‘It’s quite powerful to be part of,’ Mark adds. ‘And it’s interesting – the idea of “healing Country” is an alien concept to the Eastern Kuku Yalanji people. They lived in harmony with nature, so Country didn’t need healing in the way it does now.’
The pair agree that working alongside the Eastern Kuku Yalanji people is critical to their mission to restore the land in a way that respects and acknowledges the Traditional Owners. ‘It’s a chance to walk together, walk alongside each other and blend Cultural and ecological understanding,’ Kristin says.
A success story: Kurranji Bubu (Cassowary Land)
‘In 2010, we took a big risk on this block of land. We even took out a loan to buy it. But it turned out to be one of the best things we could have done.’
Kristin is talking about the 28 hectares of restored rainforest now known as Kurranji Bubu, meaning Cassowary Land in the traditional Kuku-Yalanji Language.
A fitting name, as Kristin says, ‘There are very few times that I have been out there and not seen a cassowary.’
The patch of rainforest was first cleared in the late 1960s to farm bananas and pineapples, then again in the 1980s when it was further cleared to make way for a palm oil plantation. When Rainforest Rescue took on the land, it was littered with old cars and farming equipment, degraded buildings like sheds and 120 non-native palm oil trees.
Over a decade of restoration work saw more than 180 tonnes of rubbish removed and 40,000 native trees planted. In 2021, the plot of land was classified as a nature refuge – a legally binding status that ensures Rainforest Rescue and the state government will protect Kurranji Bubu forever. After a moving Welcome to Country, the land was officially renamed by Kuku Yalanji Elder Andrew John Solomon during a special ceremony.
Today, thanks to the help of the local communities who planted trees and removed rubbish alongside Rainforest Rescue, the nature refuge represents a ‘best practice’ model for restoration efforts and is recognised by conservationists worldwide.
Restore, protect, repeat
With more work still to be done, Rainforest Rescue is determined to protect and restore more land and work alongside Traditional Owners, the local community and other conservation partners in a shared stewardship.
A recent partnership with Intrepid’s Daintree Ecolodge helps the accommodation provider give back to the environment that sustains them and connects travellers to the cause.
Rainforest Rescue has recently launched a tree-planting experience for Ecolodge guests to visit their local nursery and get their hands dirty planting a tree that will form part of the Daintree forever – just one of the ways travellers can give back to the place they’re visiting.
To produce enough trees to match their ambitious restoration goals – with the help of generous donations – their native nursery in Cow Bay, Far North Queensland, is all set to grow more than 150,000 native trees annually. Here, they nurture native trees ready for the intense tropical climate by ‘stressing out’ seedlings and exposing them to harsh wet and dry conditions before planting in the wild.
‘The nursery is by the old airstrip. If you look at it from a satellite view the runway looks like a scar across the rainforest – it looks out of place because nature doesn’t do straight lines. And I like to think it’s like we’re healing those scars,’ Mark smiles.
You can help Mark, Kristin and the Rainforest Rescue team heal and protect the Daintree forever by donating via The Intrepid Foundation – this June the foundation is matching all donations up to AUD 50,000. Explore Intrepid’s Daintree trips to experience ‘the most extraordinary place on Earth’ for yourself.
