Camera Traps - October 2021 - Cooper Creek Wilderness

Daintree Rainforest Camera Traps – October 2021 – accrued 135-cassowary sightings, 11-dingoes and 64-feral pigs. Against the cumulative monthly average, cassowary numbers rose by 76%, whilst dingoes were 65% down and feral-pigs also dropped by 47%. Against October of the preceding year, cassowary numbers rose by 275%, dingoes fell by 91% and feral-pig sightings increased by 49%.

Image highlights from Camera Traps – October 2021

The tremendous increase in October 2021 cassowary sightings, relative to October 2020, is due to the number of chicks. Last year, four female cassowaries competed for four male mates and only one chick managed to make it through to sub-adulthood. It is very likely that female cassowaries kill the chicks of other competing females.

Despite our high hopes, dingo numbers remained low for October 2021, whereas last year, a dingo family with three-pups showed a wonderful interest in one particular camera-trap or at least the section of rainforest that that trap surveilled.

October 2021 revealed a number of additional piglets (see below):

Making donations to ‘Save the Daintree’

A recent ABC article – Decades-old conflict to develop Daintree still flaring up in Queensland’s steamy far north – reads as an undisguised call-to-action against Daintree conservation complacency, by invoking the memory of the Bjelke-Petersen government, which allegedly set wheels in motion in the 1980’s that continue to allow parts of the Daintree to be sold off privately today. Of course, transference of ownership of land took place long before 1980 and will continue long after, but using evocative language, like ‘conservationists are racing to buy the blocks to guarantee they can’t be developed‘ implies that time is fast running out before conservation of this great treasure, which is somehow only able to be achieved by people living a long way from the properties-at-risk, will soon be no longer possible. This dog-whistling, income-earning strategy attracts millions of donated dollars to a number of competing environmental Foundations, the majority of which operate, coincidentally, out of Mullumbimby, NSW and the article refers to several conservation groups, raising money to try to stop the Daintree from being cleared and quotes:

When people go north of the Daintree river, they think they’re in the national park. A lot of Australians are shocked to find that they’re still on private land.

Fact is, Queensland’s Wet Tropics was inscribed onto the World Heritage-list on 9 December 1988, via the political mandate given by the majority of Australian voters in the 1987 federal election. A very significant portion of its (almost) 9,000-square kilometres, includes the majority of the mountainous and coastal rainforest areas between the Daintree River and Black Mountain NP just shy of Cooktown. However, not all of the landscape within this area was inscribed onto the World Heritage List, including some sections of Daintree National Park and also some areas of freehold land and whilst a few privately-held properties were compulsorily inscribed into the World Heritage Area, the vast majority were not. Land-tenure varies throughout the country and is often not easily distinguishable, but the road upon which travellers drive after leaving the ferry is not National Park and neither is it private property; it is publicly-held Road Reserve, some of which is inscribed within the World Heritage Area and some not.

Timber extraction from tropical rainforest is an indisputable part of Queensland’s history and heritage and was a significant driver of economic prosperity. So too was the declaration of freehold land and all associated entitlements that drove capitalism upon this firm foundation of tenure. Whilst World Heritage-listing empowered the Commonwealth Government to bring timber extraction within the World Heritage Area to a legislative end, the severe ecological damage of the preceding 115-years of State-sanctioned logging remains. Also, the frequency and recurrence of tropical cyclones brings this residue of structural damage back to square-one, with each successive onslaught. There are portions of remarkably undamaged tropical rainforest that were not formerly within declared Timber Reserves, prior to becoming World Heritage-listed and indeed, Daintree Rainforest, upon which these dozen camera traps are hosted, is such a portion of high-quality World Heritage-listed rainforest upon freehold land. Incidentally, this particular portion of privately-owned World Heritage land was freeholded in 1895 – eighty-years before the Great Barrier Reef was first declared National Park and eighty-five-years before the Bjelke-Peterson-led Government declared Cape Tribulation National Park.

When the Southedge Daintree Pastoral Company purchased its collection of allotments from willing landholders in the early 1980’s and proposed, that rather than extending sugar-cane north of the Daintree River, the rainforest be conserved by a custodial community sustained by tourism. Thankfully, the notoriously pro-sugar, conservative Queensland Government (of-the-day) acquiesced to this important paradigm shift, however, rather than celebrating this remarkable change for the conservation of this important area, articles like this and rhetoric from the collection of so-called ‘conservation groups’ from areas far-removed from the environment that is supposedly on the brink of oblivion, peddle an entirely different story about untrustworthy land-holders insensitive to the global significance of the environment that an ill-informed government inconceivably allowed them to purchase.Denigrating the existing owners of these freehold properties causes great offence and insult, humiliating and intimidating the legitimate holders of these properties, who never asked to be so uncharitably condemned. The inference that they have somehow crossed a line of unacceptable transgression, which must be corrected by the environmental altruism of people, who not only live securely elsewhere, but will also not stand idly by and allow the same residential security that they take for granted to extend to the people and communities within the cross-hairs of the world-renowned Daintree rainforest.In all likelihood, the facilitators of these ‘Save the Daintree’ campaigns are well-paid and enjoy their near-celebrity status, as northern New South Wales-based Daintree Rainforest crusaders, all the while having their extensive airfares, food, beverage & accommodation paid for from the generosity of the donors to such a worthwhile endeavour. At the end of the day, however, freehold property, which was formerly owned, loved, protected and paid for in good faith by legitimate landholders, will still be owned, but by a northern NSW-based foundation, that does not reside anywhere near to the area, nor belong to its custodial community, nor care for the intergenerational custodianship of collective memory, until the considerable burden of cost and ongoing land management obligations will be benevolently handed over to another Foundation representing the Traditional Owner interests of an area, upon a tenure that cannot have Native Title restored. The website of one of the ‘conservation groups’, poses a donor’s frequently asked question ‘Will I be able to visit the properties?‘ and answers;

Yes, we want donors and supporters to see the rainforest they are helping to purchase and protect … the land we are purchasing for conservation is easily accessed by a 2WD vehicle.

Seeking donations through the promise of providing public access requires Planning Approval for a material change-of-use. Already, properties purchased for conservation are being used for income-earning purposes, without planning approval and squatting is becoming an ever-increasing problem.

People and communities are integral components of the Queensland Government’s legislated definition of environment. Therefore any environmental campaign that is implicitly anti-people and/or anti-community, is by definition anti-environment. Daintree Rainforest Foundation Ltd has been registered by the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission and successfully entered onto the Register of Environmental Organisations. Not only does it reside and very much belong to the community within the environment that it was established to protect, it is also constituted to consolidate the ecological bond between the inhabitant people of the Land (and their community) as constituent parts of the natural environment, by supporting their knowledge and traditional practices and their vital roles in environmental management and development, to ensure that the natural heritage of the Land has a cultural function in the life of this community. The Daintree Rainforest Foundation LTD must also perform its functions in a way that is consistent with the protection of the natural and cultural heritage values of the Land, including its inhabitant people and, as far as practicable, liaise, cooperate with and have regard to the traditions of the indigenous people particularly concerned with the Land.

Donations made to the Daintree Rainforest Fund support the Daintree Rainforest community custodianship and are eligible for a tax deduction under the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997.

Camera Traps – October 2021

Image highlights from Camera Traps – October 2021

Despite our high hopes, dingo numbers remained low for October 2021, whereas last year, a dingo family with three-pups showed a wonderful interest in one particular camera-trap or at least the section of rainforest that that trap surveilled.

October 2021 revealed a number of additional piglets (see below):

Making donations to ‘Save the Daintree’

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Camera Traps – October 2021

Image highlights from Camera Traps – October 2021

Despite our high hopes, dingo numbers remained low for October 2021, whereas last year, a dingo family with three-pups showed a wonderful interest in one particular camera-trap or at least the section of rainforest that that trap surveilled.

October 2021 revealed a number of additional piglets (see below):

Making donations to ‘Save the Daintree’

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