On my most recent visit to the Daintree Rainforest, I went to see a property I was planning to purchase for conservation only to find someone else has beaten us to it. The outcome is devastating.
Land Clearing in the Daintree Rainforest for housing development
This property in the Forest Creek area of the Daintree Lowland Rainforest has been cleared for housing development. When I arrived, it was very early in the morning and I saw a rare Bennett's tree-kangaroo on the edge of the clearing. The Bennett's tree-kangaroo is found only from the Daintree River to just south of Cooktown and they can’t survive without their rainforest habitat. This is a freehold property and it is not illegal for the owner to destroy this World Heritage-value rainforest. The solution is to buy back these freehold properties and add them to the Daintree National Park.
Many Australians believe the Daintree Lowland Rainforest is already protected in a national park, however, that's not the reality. In the mid-1980s, the Queensland government approved a 1,136-lot rural residential subdivision in the Daintree Lowland Rainforest resulting in two-thirds of the lowland rainforest (between the Daintree River and Cape Tribulation) being excluded from protection in the Daintree National Park and Wet Tropics World Heritage Area that was declared in 1988.
Destruction of Bennetts Tree-kangaroo habitat in the Daintree
We must stop all clearing of the Daintree Lowland Rainforest. To do that, I urgently need your help to keep buying back land before more rainforest is destroyed.
