It's time to celebrate as five roads in the Daintree Lowland Rainforest are permanently closed and revegetated. Our partners Daintree Life set out to close five service roads and return them to rainforest for Cassowaries and other endangered wildlife. With your support, success has come. 

Daintree Life tree planting volunteers. 

In the mid-1980's the Queensland Government approved an 1,100 lot rural residential subdivision in the Daintree Lowland Rainforest in Far North Queensland. The development that followed resulted in the construction of over 50 km of roads and the building of hundreds of houses. This resulted in two-thirds of the land on the coastal strip between the Daintree River and Cape Tribulation being excluded from the declaration in 1988 of the expanded Daintree National Park and Wet Tropics World Heritage Area. 

Through successful land buyback programs that began in 1992, some of these roads can now be closed as all of the surrounding lands have been purchased and added to the Daintree National Park. With full support from Douglas Shire Council, five service roads have now been fully closed and planted. The planting has also helped heal gaps or ‘scars’ in the rainforest canopy and as the rainforest trees grow they'll provide habitat for wildlife including the Southern Cassowaries, Bennett’s Tree-kangaroos and Boyd’s Forest Dragons. 

The project to close and revegetate these five service roads was completed in April 2019 with the planting of 4,692 trees and is summarised below.

Service Road 1 (DL043B south). Before: Site prepared and ready for planting in November 2018.

During. Volunteers planting out this service road.

After: 1,146 trees successfully established. 

 Service Road 2 (DL042A). Planted in January 2019 with 1,060 trees.

 Service Road 3 (DL042B) Planted in January 2019 with 760 trees.

 Service Road 4 (DL042D South). Planted in January 2019 with 181 trees. 

Service Road 4 (DLO43A North) Planted in January 2019 with 560 trees. 

Service Road 5 (DL042C). Planted in April 2019 with 985 trees. 

There was a fantastic level of support from the local community with many volunteers getting hands-on with the planting. Daintree Life was also assisted by nonprofit organisation Reforest Now who received a significant grant from the Foundation for Australia's Most Endangered Species Limited. 

This result would not have been possible without the purchase of land for conservation over the past twenty-five years. The purchased properties were placed in the Daintree National Park and road access was no longer required. This gave the go-ahead to close the roads and plant them with full permission of Douglas Shire Council as the outcomes will contribute to a considerable reduction of maintenance costs of these roads.

Daintree Life achieved this outcome with the support of individuals and organisations who came together to make this happen. They would like to acknowledge and credit the following:

• Kuku Yalanji Traditional Owners
• Douglas Shire Council
• Foundation for Australia’s Most Endangered Species Ltd
• ReForest Now
• Rainforest 4

Congratulations to Dave and Connie at Daintree Life for delivering this fantastic outcome. Rainforest 4 was able to assist Daintree Life with ongoing monthly grants for planting trees. Thanks to our Rainforest Champions for their recurring monthly gifts which have made this possible. To help create more great outcomes like this, please make a donation to Rainforest 4.