Introducing Nox
Inspired by the name of the wolf 'Two-socks' in the film 'Dances with Wolves', this young male dingo’s name 'No socks' was abbreviated to 'NOX', when he arrived towards the end of a very wet January, probably evicted from [...]
Protection through partnership
Protection through partnership Protection through Partnership has been the World Heritage mantra since 1988. What makes the concept of World Heritage exceptional is its universal application. World Heritage sites belong to all the peoples of the [...]
Living with Cassowaries – Part 2
Living with Cassowaries - Part 2 Big Bertha has become accustomed to public admiration. She was first described as The Grand Dame of the Daintree, in the Port Douglas Mossman Gazette and her image was distributed to [...]
The art of camouflage
The art of camouflage Daintree Rainforest showcases the art of camouflage and is renowned as the World’s longest surviving rainforest. This claim is based on the number of families of primitive flowering plants called Angiosperms that [...]
Thornton Peak Landslide
THORNTON PEAK LANDSLIDE IN THE HEART OF REFUGIA 1 JULY 2018 This Thornton Peak Landslide followed heavy, unseasonal rainfall after a tumultuous 137-mm fell in a relatively short period overnight, precipitating the slumping of a significant [...]
Mahogany bridges tenures in the Daintree
The complexity of managing multi-tenured lands is shown when a valuable Mahogany traverses Cooper Creek across two adjacent properties, one within and the other outside the boundaries of Wet Tropics World Heritage Area. Section 56 of the Wet Tropics [...]
Green Dinosaur Variations
Ribbonwood Well-known to the timber community, 'Ribbonwood' is an attractively grained timber that was extremely restricted in its distribution. The primitive angiosperm Idiospermum australiense, a.k.a. 'The Green Dinosaur', is an ever-reliable piece of evidence of rainforest continuity over a period [...]
Scorpion-tailed Spiders en masse
Until recently, sightings of this rarely-seen Scorpion-tailed Spider (Arachnura melanura) could have been counted on one hand, then approximately fifty of them were found on one tree in our tropical fruit orchard. A star-apple fruit tree (Chrysophyllum cainito), with an abundant growth of epiphytes, [...]
Red Boobook
After more than twenty-years of searching Daintree Rainforest for all manner of cryptic life forms, we have at last photographic evidence of this rare Red Boobook (Ninox boobook lurida). The Southern Boobook (Ninox boobook) is also known as Mopoke, Morepork, Spotted Owl or [...]
Yellow Many-headed Slime Mould
At last, warmer weather and rain has enlivened the Daintree Rainforest, ending a long, cold winter. With below average rainfall, the rich and vibrant presence of fungi has been lessened, but today the Yellow Many-headed Slime Mould (Physarum polycephalum) [...]
