Cape Tribulation Daintree Rainforest

The Northern Brown Bandicoot is a cheeky little critter that forages around the edge of rainforest dwellings, often intruding beyond the limits of residential sensibility

It has recently been revealed that Queensland’s Minister for Mines & Energy, the Hon. Geoff Wilson MP, had quietly slipped into the Daintree rainforest, without any public notification or liaison opportunity for local residents.  As has been previously reported, the Queensland Government excised the Daintree Rainforest Community from the Electricity Supply Authority’s Distribution Area in May 2000.

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Behold, the Bird-dropping Spider (Celaenia excavata) - a design masterpiece that both repels predators and attracts prey.

As can be seen in the image, the underlying ‘look’ of dried liquid residue is actually silk, woven flat onto the leaf surface to give the impression of a splatter mark.

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Hon Craig Wallace, Minister for Natural Resources and Water met with traditional owners and Cooper Creek Wilderness on Thursday 30 November 2008, when Queensland Government came to Cairns.

Mr Wallace has promised that the Kaba Gada Reserve will be protected as an Environmental and Cultural Reserve.  It will not be a “recreational reserve.”

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Last night, I captured these images of an unidentified predatory katydid.  Also, three days ago, the Buff-breasted Pardise Kingfishers arrived en masse from New Guinea.  We are now in the warm half of the year and the forest revels with its arrival.

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Students of a unique ecosystem

Ecotourism at Cooper Creek Wilderness

“The Sacred Heart of the Daintree Rainforest”

Cooper Creek Wilderness thanks visitors, past, present and future, for their participation in a unique rainforest experience.

The Hewett Family, Prue, son Neil and his wife Angie have made generational commitments that ensure that the ancient and spectacular rainforest on Lot 52 SR537 Cooper Creek, is conserved to perpetuity in ways that support the transmission of its world heritage values to future generations.

We have challenged the thinking of present ideologies that rely on governmental institutional arrangements for the protection and conservation of Nature. Read the rest of this entry »

The onslaught on the integrity of the “Blue Hole” continued over the weekend.  A local resident was distressed to find a number of men, all fully decked out in scuba gear, removing live fish by the bucketload.

The poachers came in 2 cars and he was able to get their registration numbers.  The information was reported to authorities.  Once again the official buck-passing began.  Who is responsible for the management and protection of the most sacred place in the Daintree Rainforest?

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Cycads have an evolutionary history dating back to the dry, cool age of the Triassic, when much of the world’s terrestrial landscape was inhospitable to spore-producing plants. They have carried the evolutionary breakthrough of the seed from an ancient group of now-extinct plants called Bennettitaleans, to the present.

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Often it is the small and exquisite that catches your eye as you walk through the rainforest.  Faeries baskets are like this.  The flowers are cauliflorous, growing in clumps on the trunk of the tree, and delicately shaped like a basket with the petals joined at the base.   It is a small, understorey tree with a trunk diameter of about 5cm.  It is a member of the custard apple family, Annonaceae and its fruit is remarkably similar to another small tree in the same family, Haplostichanthus.

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In her 16th July 2008 media release, GREEN PAPER ON CARBON POLLUTION REDUCTION SCHEME RELEASED, Senator, the Hon. Penny Wong, Minister for Climate Change and Water, stated that:

“Climate change threatens … icons like the Great Barrier Reef, the Kakadu wetlands and the multi billion dollar tourism industries they support.”

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The land valuation of our property in the Daintree rainforest has recently jumped by 250%.   This may well reflect market activity over the last few years, but then again, government intervention has largely influenced these changes, with broad scale expropriation of development rights, including the right to construct dwelling homes on freehold land.  It is unsurprising that properties with established homes would become more valuable, because of their administratively increased exclusivity, but these are not unimproved values.  It is equally evident that those properties that were compulsorily stripped of development rights lost market value and for obvious reasons.

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