australian tropical research foundation

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by Dr Hugh Spencer

Home to the southern cassowary, one of the world's largest flightless birds, crocodiles, fruit bats and a host of other animals and plants, the Daintree lowlands have become one of Australia’s most beautiful icons.

With an unbroken history of over 100 million years, the tropical rainforests of the Daintree lowlands are, miraculously, still surviving and inspiring people such as Robin. However their future is, like so much of the world's remaining rainforests, dire. The Daintree lowlands, for that is the really unique and unprotected area, is under immediate threat from, not logging, but piecemeal development.

For, you see, the Daintree has had a long history of attempts at human settlement since the beginnings of the 1900's. After the Great Depression, settlers were encouraged to go there as leasehold farmers, to "fill the north,” clear the forests and set up farms. Luckily, this ancient forest proved tougher than the farmers, and their leaseholds were bought out by an enterprising local real estate agent, and freeholded, and subdivided into over 1100 two to four acre blocks with the blessing of the then Queensland Government, in the late 1970's.

Read the whole article at the source: http://www.nakedineden.com/Daintree_History.htm