2023-24 ANNUAL REPORT

The most tumultuous event of the year was Tropical Cyclone Jasper – the wettest cyclone in Australian history.  Making landfall at Category 2 off the eastern coast of Wujal Wujal on 13th December 2023, Jasper dropped massive rainfall, inflicting an estimated $1-billion damage-bill across North Queensland.

In the relentless fight against a universal entropy, life suffered a terrible loss with hundreds of landslides across the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, exacting a terrible toll upon the rainforest’s structural integrity.

Foundation directors Prue, Angie & Neil Hewett reside alongside the watercourse about three kilometres upstream from where this image (above) was photographed and under the ensuing deluge, flooding rose to the very edge of their dwelling.  As human inhabitants within the passage of the cyclone’s fury, every aspect of impact derived informative understanding from the endured experience.  Five cassowaries were lost from the population that are monitored within the Foundation’s Camera Trap project, including four-chicks from two broods and calamitously, one adult female in her reproductive prime.

Almost all watercourses throughout the Wet Tropics are now laden with the fine grains of collapsed rainforest, replacing pools interspersed between cascades with runnels of sandy shallows.  Stream inhabitants have been severely robbed of habitat and this changed characteristic will not be easily or quickly resolved.  Also, the sheer mass of decomposing forest product seems to have given rise to a manifold increase in beetle larvae with a corresponding increase in feral-pig numbers, which will be revealed with greater detail in the Camera Trap Report (below).

There is no undoing of this ecological collapse and whilst there is strong evidence that climate change has played a part, particularly the weakening of the northern hemisphere’s largest semi-permanent high pressure system, the Siberian High, which drives monsoonal rains into North Queensland, we must not ever forget or trivialise the historic contributions from 115-years of State-sanctioned logging nor the estimated 30,000-feral-pigs digging through the rainforest’s root-structure in their relentless pursuit of worms.

Not only does the World Heritage Area and surrounding Endangered Ecosystem Community suffer from unrecoverable degradation, the critically important conservation economy that local communities rely upon for cost-recovery also suffers major losses from collapsed tourism infrastructure, its poorly-resourced reconstruction and the far-greater likelihood of future collapses of an even more challenging scope.

From 12 permanently positioned camera traps, 2023-24 accrued 972-cassowary sightings, 527-dingoes and 3,018-feral-pigs.  In terms of cumulative monthly averages, cassowary numbers fell by 3% to 89, dingo numbers remained steady at around 40-per-month and feral-pig numbers rose by 20% to 157 monthly sightings.  In comparison with 2022-23, cassowary numbers decreased by 42%, dingo sightings dropped by 34% and feral-pigs increased by 34%.

Against the relative uniformity of cassowary and dingo sightings over the past 48-months, feral-pig numbers significantly increased.  Ironically, World Heritage Areas and National Parks appear to favour the opportunistic invasives over native inhabitants and just in case the legislators and policy-makers are unaware, declaring feral-pigs as ‘key threatening processes’, ‘undesirable animals’ or any ‘class of pest’ has no meaning to pigs, which rather thrive beneath the unintended security of legislative protection.

Feral-pigs adversely affect the federally declared Endangered Southern Cassowary (Casuarius casuarius johnsonii) through predation, habitat degradation, competition and disease transmission.  Daintree Rainforest Camera Trap Reports remind recipient agencies that beneath a conservation blanket of legislative protection, feral-pigs massively out-number Endangered Southern Cassowaries.

Dingoes are also shown to predate upon feral-pigs, but even more importantly, displace feral pigs through fear-of-predation from areas of cassowary habitat where they are more vulnerable to dingo attack.  Despite the ecological value of dingoes over feral-pigs, these reports also remind recipiants that within the State of Queensland, the Dingo is a declared category 3, 4, 5 and 6 Restricted Invasive Animal under the Biosecurity Act 2014 and prohibited from being kept in the environment that is not declared as a class of Protected Area.

In continuation of the seemingly relentless anti-community `Save the Daintree campaigns’ that drove the maligned community to bring Daintree Coast 360 (DC360) into existence, the Foundation has been asked to respond, yet again, to DC360 concerns, with the following reply:

The management committee thanks DC360 for its letter dated Wednesday 9^th October 2024 and shares the legitimate concerns raised therein.  

The Foundation was established in 2016, in accordance with Article 17 of the World Heritage Convention, which states that States Parties shall consider or encourage the establishment of national, public and private foundations or associations whose purpose is to invite donations for the protection of the cultural and natural heritage as defined within Articles 1 and 2 of the World Heritage Convention.  

In support of the DC360 initiative, the Foundation submitted its $100 Associate Membership application on 9^th June 2024, but has not yet received notification of the application’s status.  The Foundation also made application for Associate Membership during DC360’s first year of operation, but this seems to have fallen through the gaps of early administrative establishment. 

Nevertheless, to directly allay DC360’s main concerns, the Foundation proudly asserts that it is constitutionally bound to consolidate the ecological bond between the inhabitant people and their communities, as constituent parts of the natural environment, and also supports custodianship to ensure that the care and protection of the natural environment has an Article 5 cultural function within the life of the Daintree Coast Community.  Also, as Management Committee members include long-term Daintree Rainforest World Heritage inhabitants, denigration of the local community, as environmental liabilities for remote fundraising purposes, is deemed as unethical as it is repugnant. 

Environmental and cultural values between the Daintree and Bloomfield Rivers are of the highest order of global significance, and yet no other community has suffered more from the seemingly endless attacks and perpetual depletion of environmental and cultural assets, including human resources, with every uninvited insurgency.   

The Foundation maintains that the Daintree Coast Community has a fundamental right to exist and an entitlement to fight for its future, with its greatest prospects being met by achieving world-class custodial excellence of its environmental and cultural treasures, but with every lost asset, this potential plummets.  Foundation officials are happy to meet with DC360 officials to discuss any issues or concerns to DC360.

On behalf of the Foundation, I hereby thank the generous contributors to the Daintree Rainforest Fund and also the directors, for their enthusiasm, dedication and all the various contributions that have brought the Daintree Rainforest Foundation Ltd., successfully to its ninth Annual General Meeting.

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