Camera Traps – October 2024

On 9th December 1988, when the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area had to be given a function in the life of the community, the Australian and Queensland Governments agreed to a management scheme consisting of:

• Ministerial Council;

• Wet Tropics Management Authority (WTMA);

• Community Consultative Committee; &

• Scientific Advisory Committee.

aAlas, in the particular context of Daintree Rainforest World Heritage management, the meaning of ‘community’ seems to have been well and truly commandeered by external agencies and authorities and to the considerable detriment of the actual community that is otherwise an integral part of the World Heritage environment.

At the 31st Session of the World Heritage Committee in 2007, New Zealand advocated for strengthening local World Heritage communities, quoting Mr. Koïchiro Matsuura, Chairperson of the 22nd Session of the World Heritage Committee (Kyoto, 1998):

Without the understanding and support of the public at large, without the respect and daily care of the local communities, which are the true custodians of World Heritage, no amount of funds or army of experts will suffice in protecting the sites.

Indeed, New Zealand proposed that ‘community’ be added to the Budapest Declaration On World Heritage and the World Heritage Committee agreed … to enhance the role of the Communities in the implementation of the World Heritage Convention.

When the Wet Tropics was first World Heritage-listed, the Daintree Rainforest community held a veritable monopoly of access and management potential between the road network and the famed Daintree Rainforest.  Since then, Ministerial Council has funded the ‘$23-million Daintree Rescue Package’, transferring 20-percent of community-lands from private-to-public ownership and funding boardwalks and visitor facilities upon strategically acquired properties, deflecting tourism advantage away from the local community onto these heavily subsidised (now publicly-owned) facilities.  Commercial access permits to these newly constructed and subsidised facilities was almost exclusively restricted to day-tour operators out of the regional accommodation centres, whilst WTMA pursued a policy of re-directing tourism ‘beyond sustainable levels’ to appropriate areas south of the Daintree River, with tens-of-millions-of-dollars invested into new travel experiences to drive this re-direction policy towards achievement.  The Daintree Rainforest community was excised from State’s electricity distribution authority in May 2000, whilst ferry-fees for entry into the area have skyrocketed by 1,225%.

Australia’s beloved Daintree is facing an emergency …’  This has been the rallying call for almost every environmental campaign since the 2nd World Wilderness Congress in Cairns, QLD in June 1980.  This hackneyed mantra to ‘Save the Daintree Rainforest’ negatively and dishonestly portrays freehold properties neighbouring National Park and/or the World Heritage Area as being under urgent threat and also ‘under siege from the relentless march of land clearing’.  In truth, all property within the Daintree Rainforest is either World Heritage-listed or federally declared Endangered Ecosystem Community and is therefore subject to statutory protection under the Commonwealth Government’s Environment Protection & Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act 1999, as well as the Queensland Government’s Local Government Act 2009, Planning Act 2019, Biosecurity Act 2014 and Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2003.

With increasing offensiveness, visiting environmental crusaders abuse Daintree Rainforest Community hospitality by coveting privately-held properties and advertising features of outstanding conservation importance, such as the incredible survival story of the world’s most primitive and enduring angiosperm, the Green Dinosaur – Idiospermum australiense, as an urgent call-to-action for donations to ‘Save the Daintree Rainforest’.

These outstanding attributes are environmental assets that underpin the custodial community’s socio-economic viability.  The intellectual property of their unique biology and highly evolved refinement within an ancient community-of-life, is what Queensland, Australia and the World have restricted the custodial community to rely upon for its conservation responsibilities and for sustenance and quality of life. 

Every coveted acquisition of property depletes the Daintree Rainforest community of environmental capital and custodial integrity.  What was formerly held with the love and finances of the passionate community of vigilant inhabitants, is increasingly transferred into the remote care of a non-residential Boards of Directors, thousands of kilometres away from the knowledge requirements of what is going-on at any given moment. 

A seemingly relentless process of community attrition has continued throughout an ongoing campaign to ‘Save the Daintree Rainforest’ from some implied imminent threat.  Over the 36-years since World Heritage-listing, the local community has been greatly reduced and fragmented in number of properties, population size and has become more and more impoverished.  Its freehold-borders have been compromised by the insinuation of public-access entitlements into residential areas and rather than benefitting from the heritage function that was supposed to be provided to the host community, a community death-sentence seems to be rolling out.

Crass incursion of so-called “charities” or not-for-profit organisations into the Daintree Rainforest are now exploiting the local community’s precious lands for monetary gain.  No-one was prepared for this incursion and there are no strategies in place to deflect undesirable actions that covet and acquire community property.

The dishonesty of the intruders’ rhetoric has shocked landholders who live in a unique environment of rare and threatened species that is unparalleled elsewhere on Earth.  The Daintree Rainforest Community is fighting for its life as it is being whittled down, property by property.  Perhaps the ecological bonds of territorialism and the stunning density of the tropic rainforest has eclipsed the local community from the unexpected onslaught of greed and avarice that now threatens our community’s viability.

The local community’s cassowary care group somehow lost its community-built and owned nursery to a Northern NSW-based charity.  The community’s seniors group – who identify as ‘Guardians of the Daintree Rainforest’, accepted the vision statement that headed the 1992 Daintree Planning Package:

“With the right sort of control and definition of permissible development on freehold blocks, the area could become as important as an example of environmentally harmonious human occupation, as the surrounding natural treasures.  If, in the development of the area, love of land could replace greed; if developments are blended into the landscape with minimal disturbance, the visitor and resident alike could enjoy the spiritual refreshment of penetrating the edge of the wilderness while enjoying the reassurance of basic human society.”  –  (Hill-1982)

The intergovernmental Daintree Futures Study 2000 concluded:

The best future for the Daintree is not for it to become just another part of Australia’s semi urban sprawl, but for it to be a unique Rainforest Community: to protect its unique natural values as a base for an economy and a community. This is an ecologically, socially and economically sustainable solution.

The local community is united in its love of its environment and its commitment to conservation of the area.  However, there appears to be a gaping shortage of support for the local community’s achievement of this important conservation entitlement.  After 36-years of attrition, perhaps the time is now ripe for WTMA and every other authority and agency to steer Australia into alignment with the aforementioned Budapest Declaration and provide the local Daintree Rainforest Community with world-class support for a world-class custodianship.