A global treasure

Rainforests cover less than 7% of the Earth's surface but are home to more than 50% of its’ animal and plant species, many that are rare and threatened.

Australia’s Wet Tropics region including the Daintree, is represented on The Global 200 list, a collection of the Earth’s 200 most outstanding, important, and diverse habitats. It contains the oldest continually surviving tropical rainforest in the entire world.

The Wet Tropics rainforests provide an unparalleled living record of the ecological and evolutionary processes that shaped the flora and fauna of Australia over the past 415 million years. Scientists also believe that these rainforests hold the key to cures for chronic diseases with the USA National Cancer Institute having already identified 2100 plants from rainforest with anticancer activity.

The Daintree rainforest is as mega diverse as any on the planet, including the Amazon, but it is still under threat.

An international response

Since the late 1700s much of Australia’s rainforest, including 75% of its original tropical rainforest, has been cleared for agricultural, industrial and urban development with the continued threat from introduced species and the affects of climate change.

On top of this a disastrous subdivision of land in the 1980s saw an influx of private landowners and a rise in tourism to the Daintree, Wet Tropics region.

This pressure has resulted in a combined effort by governments, conservation organisation and private citizens to save Australia’s remaining tropical rainforests.

The Australian Rainforest Foundation (ARF) is leading the recovery of the Daintree rainforest through a buy back of freehold land for conservation including the George Mansford Reserve.