- Environmental charity Climate Force is collaborating with the Eastern Kuku Yalanji people and rangers to create a wildlife corridor that runs between two UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Australia: the Daintree Rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef.
- Wildlife habitats in this region have become fragmented due to industrial agriculture, and a forested corridor is expected to help protect biodiversity by allowing animals to forage for food and connect different populations for mating and migration.
- The project aims to plant 360,000 trees over an area of 213 hectares (526 acres); so far, it has planted 25,000 trees of 180 species on the land and in the nursery, which can also feed a range of native wildlife.
- The project is ambitious and organizers say they’re hopeful about it, but challenges remain, including soil regeneration and ensuring the planted trees aren’t killed off by feral pigs or flooding.
Indigenous ranger Jason Petersen remembers how he used to watch the world’s oldest rainforest in wonder as a child. When the rains arrived, they would wash the dust from the trees, revealing the lush colors of the forest. Now, as an adult, he says he hopes his son will experience the same awe as he plants a new wildlife corridor on this same land.
“I hope [our children] will be able to start seeing a positive change. Once the movement of the animals starts from up in the mountains and down into the riparian areas it will be immense,” Petersen says.
In Australia’s Cape Kimberley, environmental charity Climate Force is collaborating with the Eastern Kuku Yalanji people and rangers to create a corridor that runs between two UNESCO World Heritage Sites: the Daintree Rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef. To do this, they will need to plant 360,000 trees.
Wildlife habitats in this region have become fragmented. The area where this new forest will be planted is a 213-hectare (526-acre) plot of land that was cleared for cattle in the 1960s and then used as a commercial banana farm until the 1990s. It was choked with invasive Guinea grass and covered in abandoned farm machinery.
“For a good while now our Country [Indigenous land] has been bare,” Petersen told Mongabay.
The fragmentation of forests leads to a loss of diversity and decline in species. But strips of land that make up wildlife corridors can help connect wildlife populations. They ensure foraging for food, connecting different populations for mating and other migratory need, say conservationists. In December 2022, the U.N. biodiversity framework recognized ecological corridors as an important conservation measure alongside protected areas.
For the Daintree Rainforest, conservationists say a wildlife corridor will help protect endemic Bennett’s tree kangaroos (Dendrolagus bennettianus), spectacled flying foxes (Pteropus conspicillatus) and southern cassowaries (Casuarius casuarius), the closest living species to dinosaurs.