2018 ANNUAL REPORT
This year, DAINTREE RAINFOREST FOUNDATION LTD expressed its formal interest in acquiring Lot 177 Turpentine Road, Diwan, QLD. Fronting onto Cape Tribulation Road and also adjoining Cooper Creek at the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area boundary, gives this property strategically important cassowary conservation values.
The intended purpose of the acquisition is to secure the property’s conservation values as a Nature Refuge under a conservation covenant that is binding upon novation of deed upon title and to protect the property from development that in any way conflicts with optimised cassowary interests and surrounding World Heritage values.
Insofar as prioritising resources and effort to maximize outcomes for recovering cassowary population is concerned, the acquisition of the property, its full-time management by adjoining human inhabitants and the inscription of the conservation covenant upon title, meets the following key action areas:
- A safe haven for Endangered Southern Cassowaries is created;
- Strategically critical cassowary habitat is secured;
- The vulnerability for cassowary extinction is substantially lessened through this strategic intervention; and
- The capacity to exclude trespass and its demonstrated consequential degradation, is substantively improved.
Unfortunately, the current owner has not responded to the formal expression of interest and it is the belief of Board members that a more substantive offer will need to be made, as funds become more available.
Indigenous Sacred Site EN:C53
The Board wrote to the Trustees of the Blue Pools Reserve, seeking urgent support for formal protection of the Aboriginal Sacred Site EN:C53, upon Cooper Creek and within the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area. A compelling argument was presented for urgent intervention, into a process wrought with inadequacy, but the damage continues, unabated.
Daintree Rainforest Foundation Ltd Brochure
A brochure has been designed and printed and is being distributed to visitors to the area.
Annual & Financial Reports
On behalf of the Foundation, I hereby thank the generous contributors to the Daintree Rainforest Fund and also the Patron, senior traditional owner of the land and the directors, Mr. Ron Shoppee, Mr. Paul Chantrill, Mr. Cliff Wise, Mr. Emrys Nekvapil, Ms. Prue Hewett and Mrs. Angie Hewett for their enthusiasm, dedication and all the various contributions that have brought the Daintree Rainforest Foundation Ltd., successfully to its third Annual General Meeting.