Camera Traps – January 2025

Camera Traps – January 2025 accrued 193-cassowaries, 116-dingoes and 393-feral pigs.  Against the cumulative monthly average, cassowary numbers increased by 91%, dingoes soared by 182% and feral-pig numbers doubled.  Against January 2024, cassowaries rose by 79%, dingoes increased by 132% and feral-pig number also grew by 116%.

Having rightfully declared that tourism is too important to Queenslanders not to have a clear plan for the future, Premier, the Honourable David Crisafulli MP, has vowed to restore Queensland’s reputation and supercharge tourism in our state.  Minister for Environment and Tourism, the honourable Andrew Powell MP, has highlighted tourism as the crown jewel of Queensland and proposed to responsibly and sustainably unlock the potential of ecotourism, in partnership with those who share our dedication to this land.

This is a reassuring reminder that our duly elected parliamentary leaders acknowledge and assert their dedication to this land, but also share this commitment with the people and communities, who not only make the State inimitable, but also maintain a passionate and knowledgeable determination to protect that inimitability.  It is a timely call-to-action, to overturn inherited tourism disrepute and salvage the State’s ecotourism potential from the legacy of irresponsible and unsustainable shackling.

Queensland’s capacity to achieve these important reform objectives will be determined by the extent to which its full collection of ‘off-reserve’ environments in particular are able to be protected and presented to visitors from both within the State and all-around the world, with inspiring, local-community-led expertise (NB -‘local-community’, in this context, does not mean the more politically influential township or regional centre down the road).  Queensland also needs to discover the ways in which genuine ecotourism can soar high above a simple catch-phrase from within a niche of tax-payer-funded nature-based tourism on Protected Areas, upholding the lofty principals and practices that transform the way humans travel and the way that the Queensland tourism industry functions.

At the outset of this important salvage operation, ‘ecotourism’ needs to be clearly and unequivocally re-defined and quarantined from resurgent ‘green-washing’.  It also needs to be distinguished for its relative order of importance on a differential tenure basis and, in terms of scope, applied to the State’s greatest environmental and socio-economic advantage.

The four original pillars of ecotourism were:  Respecting host cultures; maximising environmental benefits; maximising benefits to local people, and maximising traveller satisfaction.  ‘Ecotourism’ was defined internationally as responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people.  So, what went so terribly wrong in Queensland?

In 2002, Ecotourism Australia’s membership was overwhelmingly dominated by tour operators holding Commercial Activity Permits administered by state Protected Area management agencies.  Identified by the acronym TIPA (Tourism in Protected Areas), this vocal majority seized the emerging opportunity of national ecotourism accreditation by endorsing the removal of economic support for both conservation and also the improvement of the well-being of the local people responsible for the attraction’s stewardship.  In doing so, the respectability of the international definition of ecotourism was eviscerated nationally to ecologically sustainable tourism with a primary focus on experiencing natural areas that fosters environmental and cultural understanding, appreciation and conservation.  

Ten-percent of Queensland’s total state landholdings are Protected Areas, managed under the Nature Conservation Act 1992 and resourced through budgetary and indicative allocations.  It was upon these taxpayer-funded Protected Areas that TIPA operations were ‘ecotourism accredited’ under the amended definition, despite paying no conservation cost and providing no improvement to the well-being of local land-holders.  While the swell of support for a consolidating partnership between Protected Area Managers and Commercial Activity Permit-holders was understandable, these two major market powers should never have been permitted to commandeer ‘ecotourism‘ as some kind of intersecting entitlement and yet, green-washing within the TIPA alliance has mired ‘ecotourism’ into rank mediocrity, fetid with the stench of dishonesty.

Twenty-five-percent of Queensland’s total State landholdings is held in freehold, some of which has outstanding conservation value, including properties that are World Heritage-listed or declared as Threatened Ecological Communitiesunder Commonwealth legislation.  It is upon these properties, which receive no recurrent funding or indicative allocations whatsoever, but do pay the State annual land tax, that ‘genuine ecotourism’ is relied upon for the fulfilment of conservation requirement.  This ‘genuine ecotourism’ articulates respectability through the principle of sustainability and encourages participation through a culture of altruism, with great potential to supplement and moderate the fluctuations of fickle rural economies and provide recompense and dignity to people and communities in remote homelands.

Falling outside of the support structures and resourcing regimes allocated for Protected Areas, freehold conservation requires the cooperation of landholders and financial support from altruistic travellers, providing recompense for the care and presentation of natural and cultural assets by the most rightful, intimately knowledgeable and deserving beneficiaries.  Ecotourism on freehold property regulates access, enabling visitors to enjoy wilderness values under the informative supervision of an inhabitant.  This perspective value-adds to the destination’s nature-based appeal.  Visitors are amazed by the natural values but are also very interested in the interactions between human inhabitants and their natural environment and how they go about stewardship.  ‘User-pays’ fully-finances the conservation management of the land without any cost to the taxpayer.  Beyond their successful and highly-informed immersion, the visitor is rewarded for their altruism, as an active and willing participant in the achievement of Queensland’s conservation obligations and as a consequence, the environment is protected for the livelihoods it provides its stewards.

The devastating combination of national ecotourism accreditation and conservation subsidisation for the illusion of free-entry upon public estate only, manifests as exclusionary influence to fair trade across tenure and warrants criticism on the grounds of unfair competition. Brandishing national ecotourism accreditation upon publicly-funded Protected Area, whereupon millions of dollars of subsidisation to construct and maintain free-forest-access facilities to accommodate unrestricted entry to the public-at-large, in a multi-tenured environment, commandeers the ecotourism market which local communities otherwise rely upon.  The disparity of recurrent funding for salaries, capital expenses, vehicles, repairs and maintenance, administration, signage, marketing, insurance, training, superannuation, workplace health and safety, et cetera, provides tourism with the illusion of free-entry, when in fact taxpayers unwittingly finance a multi-million dollar exclusionary influence to fair-trading between the public and private conservation sectors.

In 2002, the Executive Director of the Wet Tropics Management Authority proposed a Rainforest Tax in his keynote presentation at the International Ecotourism Conference.  Summarising that the annual costs of providing tourism with public access to Protected Areas throughout Queensland’s Wet Tropics was around $13.5-million, whilst the only cost-recovery was from Commercial Activity Fees, accruing some $325,000 per annum.  The taxpayer was well and truly subsidising tourism onto Protected Areas by more than ninety-seven-cents-in-the-dollar.   Under national ecotourism accreditation and beyond the exclusionary influence to fair trade across tenure, travellers with ecotourism intent are deceived into not contributing to the costs of conservation or the improvement in the well-being of local people.

Containing the famed Daintree Rainforest and Great Barrier Reef and also the richest concentration of threatened species per-unit-area in the world, there is no portion of Queensland more dependant upon sustainable ecotourism than freehold property where these two World Heritage treasures unite.  Indeed, all freehold property within the Daintree Rainforest is either World Heritage-listed or federally declared within an Endangered Ecosystem Community, requiring conservation management synonymous with publicly-owned and funded Protected Areas.

So, how is sustainable ecotourism supported into this most remarkable part of Queensland?

Following World Heritage-listing on the 9th December 1988, Queensland’s Environment Department allocated some seventy Commercial Activity Permits into the surrounding Daintree National Park, with a latent carrying capacity of around seven-hundred-and-seventy-thousand visitors per year.  In July 1993, these allocated Permits were frozen under Ministerial moratorium and on 16th June 1994, the $23.162-million Daintree Rescue Package paid for the construction of enough public boardwalks and visitor facilities to accommodate the full carrying capacity of the existing permit allocation.  However, commercial access to these newly-constructed facilities was restricted to authorised permit-holders only, who were almost exclusively Cairns and Port Douglas day-tour operators, whilst the infrastructure and lands built upon were paid for by the tax-payer. 

To make way for the construction of these public facilities, the diminishing communities of freehold-landholders within the heart of the Daintree Rainforest tourism district, under the ever-increasing regulatory requirements of a conservation land-use, remained utterly dependent upon sustainable ecotourism.  As primary production was overtaken by tourism, as the dominant income-earning land-use, freehold properties lost farming concessions, causing unimproved capital values to sky-rocket.  Indeed, the World Heritage-listed freehold property that this Foundation particularly campaigns for, had its unimproved capital value increased by six-hundred-and-thirty-per-cent.  Meanwhile, tourism into the Daintree Rainforest was being swung where the underlying subsidies led, away from freehold properties and onto the subsidised facilities, with the tax-payer conserving the environment and the well-being of local people being increasingly eclipsed.  

In 1995, the Wet Tropics Management Authority adopted the area-specific policy, that future growth beyond the sustainable level of visitor-use in the Daintree-Cape Tribulation area will be directed to appropriate areas south of the Daintree River.  This government imposed re-direction policy extended beyond the boundaries of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area into adjacent jurisdictions and across the trade boundaries of freehold lands.

On 7th May 2000, the Queensland Government made the unprecedented decision to excise the area between the Daintree River and Cape Tribulation from the State’s electricity distribution authority, leaving the people who live and work in this area with stand-alone power systems only.  At the time, the variable cost to generate power privately via diesel generators was in the order of 25-35 cents/kWh compared to grid subsidised power costing 10 cents/kWh.  With the compounded disadvantage of engine generators constantly emitting noise and fumes, the comparative electricity impost for two equivalent luxury eco-resorts on either side of the Daintree River would burden the property to the north of the river around $167,000 per-annum more than the property to the south of the river, which would enjoy the advantages of a silent, state-supplied reticulated service at a fraction of the expense.  Also, the duty-of-care requirements for safely-refrigerated food and the tropical tourism necessity of air-conditioned accommodation, made the two-to-three-hundred-percent higher-costs of stand-alone electricity a major competitive disadvantage for freehold tourism service-providers north of the Daintree River.     

Douglas Shire Council (DSC), the State’s local government authority for the Daintree Rainforest communities, positioned itself at the forefront of the international ecotourism charge by becoming the first municipality in the world to receive both Greenglobe21 benchmarking and also Eco-destination Accreditation.  Through differential rating, however, DSC burdened Daintree Rainforest landholders with rates-payments around two-hundred-and-thirty-four percent higher than equivalent-sized properties south of the Daintree River, on the reported justification that the subdivisions had been approved without the conventional requirement to provide civic infrastructure, restricting that expense onto the community that imposed the cost.

DSC also substantially increased ferry-fees for vehicles crossing the Daintree River, from $2 to $49 per-two-way-crossing over the period since World Heritage-listing, seizing revenue from visitors attracted to the area north of the ferry-crossing.  DSC’s long-term vision to develop a world-class gateway befitting the World Heritage values of the Daintree-Cape Tribulation area, has been defined within a Daintree Gateway Master Plan, which prioritises a suite of foundation projects for the transformation of the gateway precinct.  Clear and precise practice regarding the contribution and application of funds for the Daintree Ferry operations are established within DSC’s adopted Daintree Ferry Revenue General Policy, including expenditure related to progressing the initiatives detailed in the Daintree Gateway Master Plan.

‘User-pays’ is an important principle defined within the Intergovernmental Agreement on the Environment 1992 and a defining quality of sustainable ecotourism.  To comply with such a principle, the revenue DSC extracts from landholders for exorbitant rates charges and also from travellers across the ferry via over-charged ferry-fees, should rightfully go into the conservation management of the rate-paying portion of the area that the traveller has paid to enter and also into the improvement of the well-being of the people responsible for the attraction’s stewardship.

Not only does the Daintree Ferry Revenue General Policy preclude the application of these accrued funds for such an ecologically compliant purpose, it also allows for the surplus funds to be used to support the infrastructure upgrading of the Daintree Ferry Crossing Reserve Project and yet one of the project’s dedicated purposes was deflecting tourism away from the ferry-crossing.  Contrary to the ecotourism principle of user-pays, travellers determined to cross the ferry are required to pay for the development of a facility with a strategic purpose to decrease the number of people willing to pay for the ferry-crossing.  With the taxpayer fully-funding competing infrastructure on surrounding public lands for the exclusive commercial access of ‘nationally-accredited ecotourism operators’ from outside the area and the free and unrestricted entry of the public-at-large, the marketplace is profoundly fragmented across tenure.  Ensuing congestion at the ferry, caused by this officially skewed form of day-tripping, is provided with relief for customers of the commercial permit holders, but not for those of competing businesses north of the Daintree River.  In addition to all this imposed hardship, tens of millions of dollars are also invested into developing nature-based tourism experiences south of the Daintree River, which all amounts to the cumulative undermining of ecotourism that this most dependent conservation community relies upon.

The multi-award-winning, advanced ecotourism accredited Coconut Beach Rainforest Resort was the carrier of the aforementioned $167,000 electricity liability, with all its emissions and effronteries.  However, under the cumulative weight of stifling rates payments, exclusionary influences to fair trade, ferry-fee imposts and millions of dollars invested into competing destinations, this flagship of Australian luxury ecotourism accommodation has now been rotting away into the Daintree Rainforest for fifteen-years, with a colossal loss of employment from the host community and quality ecotourism experience robbed from discerning eco-travellers from around the world.

If the place in Queensland most deserving of ecotourism excellence suffers such contradictory interference, is this not indicative of the disrepute and shackled potential that the State’s Parliamentary leadership has referred to?  The only way that ecotourism can be claimed, when neither the conservation of the environment is paid for, nor the well being of its local community improved, is dishonestly.  Under the Queensland Criminal Code, a person who dishonestly gains a benefit or advantage, pecuniary or otherwise, for any person; or causes a detriment, pecuniary or otherwise, to any person; commits the crime of fraud.  When considered across a far grander scale and ‘the person’ becomes an allied group, made up of public administrators and licensed permit-holders, does the criminal code still apply?

These monthly Camera Trap Reports are made possible by the generous members and donors of the TheseDaintree Rainforest Foundation Ltd, which has been registered by the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission and successfully entered onto the Register of Environmental Organisations.  Donations made to the Daintree Rainforest Fund support Daintree Rainforest community custodianship and are eligible for a tax deduction under the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997.