Camera Traps – February 2025

Camera Traps – February 2025 accrued 194-cassowary sightings, 33-dingoes and 173-feral pigs.  Against the cumulative monthly average, cassowary numbers rose by 89%, dingoes decreased by 19% and feral-pig numbers also fell by 12%.  Against February 2024, cassowary sightings rose by 64%, dingo increased by 22%, whereas feral-pigs fell by 13%.

In brazen defiance of the Federal MP’s thunderously unambiguous slamming of fraudulent and unlawful fundraising, Gondwana Rainforest Trust (GRT) appears to have procured the outstanding funds that were needed so urgently only a few days earlier, publishing on the 3rd March 2025 that the habitat for the endangered cassowary at Lot 92 Cape Tribulation Road in the Daintree Rainforest is safe and secure and this very important property is now protected forever!

Lot 92 contains less than one-thousandth-of-one-percent of the overall cassowary habitat within the Wet Tropics bio-region.  Changing ownership of property in and of itself, has no bearing on habitat value, which remains exactly the same as it was before the title-transfer.  The implication that cassowaries were unsafe and insecure until the property was acquired by GRT, is as outrageous as it is insulting to the previous owner and their custodial community. Cassowaries are endangered, not because of an individual property-owner, but because they are federally declared as Endangered under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC Act) 1999.

Asserting that Lot 92 Cape Tribulation Road now forms a safe and secure corridor for endangered cassowaries linking neighboring Lot 93 Cape Tribulation Road with the Daintree National Park / Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, is contradicted by the fact that Lots 92 and 93 are permanently separated by the primary thoroughfare of Cape Tribulation Road.  Also, the only portion of Daintree National Park that either property adjoins was previously held under freehold-title, until acquired by the State in the latter half of the nineteen-nineties, under the similarly uncharitable, covetous, usurpatory and legally-questionable Daintree Rescue Package (DRP), which pejoratively and prejudicially stripped people and communities from freehold properties within the Daintree Rainforest, as if it were synonymous with environmental protection.

Prior to the DRP, 1,136-properties were owned and managed by land-holders of the Daintree Rainforest communities.  If the average purchase-price (conservatively estimated) was $50,000 per-property, then land-ownership within the Daintree Rainforest would have cost $56.8-million.  This tremendous investment in Daintree Rainforest property trivialises the $23-million DRP-funding allocated by the Commonwealth & Queensland Governments in 1995, but despite being the greatest contributor to Daintree Rainforest protection, the landholders and their communities are the only resource that is on-site and capable of providing direct protection from incidental harm as and when it occurs and also the only resource that is legislatively obligated to provide environmental protection without recompense from the taxpayer.  This voluntary self-funded stewardship provides the full costs of environmental protection, vigilant caretaking and recurrent payment of annual land-tax, whereas properties acquired by the DRP were essentially abandoned to feral-pigs and relieved of any tax obligation.

Removing people and communities from acquired properties in the name of ‘conservation’ and then shading them ‘green’ on maps, whilst leaving properties with land-holders and communities in-tact, ‘un-shaded’, is pejorative and prejudicial.  People and communities that own and manage these rainforest properties are legally obligated to protect their environmental values to the full letter of the law.  Removing people and communities from these properties displaces the sole resource capable of complying with these environmental protection responsibilities, surrendering stewardship to feral-pigs without any law-abiding qualities whatsoever.

The legal definition of ‘environment’ rightfully includes ‘people and communities’, so stripping these definitive elements constitutes environmental damage.  It also perversely rallies disaffection against and/or promotes feelings of ill‑will or hostility towards those people and communities, threatening the peace, order and good governance of their lawfully established sub-section of the Commonwealth.

A charity must not commit fraud and a person shall not, in trade or commerce, engage in conduct that is misleading or deceptive or is likely to mislead or deceive, and yet, campaigning has persistently warned that Lot 92, home to endangered species like the southern cassowary and rare plants, is at risk of development, appealing for donations toprotect Lot 92 and ensure it’s never lost to development.

Lot 92, however, is zoned for Conservation under the Local Government Planning Scheme and therefore cannot be cleared or developed.  Also, since the 26th November 2021, the entire landscape inscribed within the above schematic is listed in the Endangered category of the Threatened Ecological Communities-list under the EPBC Act.  The Southern Cassowary has also been listed as Endangered under the EPBC Act since 1999, just as the Wet Tropics population is Endangered under Queensland’s Nature Conservation Act 1992.

In an expression of environmental goodwill, millions of dollars are donated annually to protect and secure the world-renowned Daintree Rainforest.  For the sake of nurturing this vitally-important environment-specific philanthropy, Australia and Queensland must ensure that the whiff of economic blood circulating towards the world’s oldest rainforest is protected from the sharks, with their keen sense of smell and voracious appetites.  Indeed, this stream of economic altruism should rightfully get to the people and communities responsible for that intended environmental care and protection and NOT to rapacious scavengers along-the-way.

These monthly Camera Trap Reports are made possible by the generous members and donors of the Daintree 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.