From a small office in Mullumbimby, a local conservation organisation is helping protect one of the most extraordinary places on Earth, more than 1,500 kilometres to the north.
The Daintree Rainforest is the oldest continually surviving tropical rainforest on the planet. It has endured for around 120 million years, surviving asteroid impacts, ice ages, and dramatic shifts in climate. Yet in the late twentieth century, parts of its lowland heart were subdivided into freehold blocks and left outside the boundaries of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, leaving them vulnerable to clearing and development.
In 2018, Kelvin Davies, a local Mullumbimby resident, founded what is now Gondwana Rainforest Trust with a simple idea: if you own the land, you can protect it. Rather than campaigning from the sidelines, the organisation set out to purchase privately owned rainforest properties and permanently remove them from the threat of development.
Since then, thousands of supporters from across Australia and around the world have helped fund the purchase and protection of 36 rainforest properties in the Daintree.
Last week, that work reached a significant milestone.
On 18 June, ten properties acquired through the Trust’s Save the Daintree buyback program, covering more than 25 hectares of lowland rainforest, were formally dedicated as Daintree National Park (CYPAL). The land is now owned by the Jabalbina Yalanji Aboriginal Corporation on behalf of the Eastern Kuku Yalanji people and jointly managed with the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service.
The achievement represents more than six years of collaboration between Traditional Owners, government, and the Trust through a conservation model known as the Pathway to Protection. It is thought to be the only non-government conservation program in Australia that purchases land specifically to enable its return to Traditional Owners and permanent protection within the national park estate.
The rainforest being protected provides habitat for threatened species, including the endangered southern cassowary and the ancient Idiospermum australiense, sometimes called the ‘green dinosaur’, a plant whose lineage stretches back to the age of the dinosaurs.
While the milestone is worth celebrating, the work is far from complete. More than 100 undeveloped freehold rainforest blocks remain in the Daintree. Gondwana Rainforest Trust is currently raising funds to secure its 37th property, Lot 1 Cape Tribulation Road, a site supporting 258 native plant species.
For a community that understands the value of rainforests through places like the Big Scrub and the Nightcap Range, the lesson is simple: when people come together to protect land, remarkable conservation outcomes are possible.
To learn more, visit savethedaintree.org.
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