WHAT’S HAPPENING TO THE DAINTREE?

As the world’s oldest tropical rainforest, the Daintree and surrounding Wet Tropics in Far North Australia are ranked by the International Union on the Conservation of Nature as the second most irreplaceable World Heritage Area on the planet. It’s a living ark of the origins of our known natural world: from the first known songbirds and flowering plants, to remant plant species that exist nowhere else.

In May 2019, following the hottest summer ever recorded, the Daintree’s managing body declared a climate emergency. The most recent climate modelling predicts that 30% of all endemic animal species will be critically endangered or extinct by 2085 if trends continue -- but new evidence suggests that decline is occuring far more rapidly than predicted. In the last eighteen months alone, the Daintree and surrounding Wet Tropics area suffered through the most severe flooding event on record, a series of extreme heatwaves 10 degrees higher than the average, and bushfires in places that had never been burnt before. 

Unlike other famous rainforests around the world, the Daintree is well protected from physical destruction like logging and burning. Climate change, led by fossil fuel burning, is the biggest threat to this incredible ancient ecosystem.

Having been sheltered from the world’s larger climate changes for the past 180 million years, the Daintree’s Gondwanan remnant species do not have the ability to adapt to the impacts of anthropogenic climate change and rising temperatures. Gondwana seeks to build a lived experience of the vitality of the climate in the Daintree, and the real impacts of change.

With nowhere else for this rainforest to survive, it’s up to us to stabilise our climate before we lose some of the most important living ecological heritage on our planet.

IMPACT

Gondwana supports the work of Half/Cut, who—together with Rainforest 4 and the Jabalbina Yalanji Aboriginal Corporation—are buying back land in the Daintree for revegetation and repatriation to the Indigenous custodians, the Kuku Yalanji bama. The properties acquired by Half/Cut and Rainforest 4 Foundation are managed by the Eastern Kuku Yalanji, as part of the Daintree National Park Cape York Peninsula Aboriginal Land (CYPAL) estate.

Every USD$2 donated protects 1m² of Daintree rainforest.

who are the kuku yalanji bama?

The Eastern Kuku Yalanji bama (people) are the owners of the Daintree Lowland Rainforest. Their Country (bubu) runs along the East Coast of Far North Queensland and it includes land and sea between Port Douglas and just south of Cooktown. The Eastern Kuku Yalanji have a rich cultural identity and indelible spiritual connection to Daintree Rainforest.

This project is indebted to the generosity and knowledge of the Kuku Yalanji bama, and in particular, Uncle Mick Kulka, Uncle Ray Pierce, and Yalanji artist Binna Swindley.

The Daintree was recently handed back to Traditional Owners, but work is still to be done. We pay respects to elders past and present for their custodianship of this incredible land and their tireless fight against oppression and dispossession.

Sitting with you on Country was a gift we will never forget.