THE YEAR OF ESTABLISHMENT

Unprecedented in Australia until 9 December 1988, privately-owned property (with human inhabitants) was compulsorily inscribed onto the World Heritage List.  With this changed paradigm of Australian conservation governance, methods for procuring sustainable conservation economies have evolved.  Many eco-travellers from Australia and around the world have availed themselves of this new opportunity to contribute and have subsequently expressed their strong and consistent enthusiasm to further support the concept and its expansion.  To this end, the establishment of a dedicated foundation was warranted, with application for registration first made on 9 September 2012.

REGISTER OF ENVIRONMENTAL ORGANISATIONS – SUCCESSFUL APPLICANT – 27 APRIL 2016

As of 27 April 2016, Daintree Rainforest Foundation Ltd and its public fund, were successfully entered onto the Register of Environmental Organisations.  Donations are now eligible for tax deduction under the Tax Assessment Act 1997 and can be made to the public fund, which is endorsed as a Deductible Gift Recipient.

Cassowary family
Daintree Rainforest Foundation Ltd
Daintree Satinash

Now that the Foundation has been properly established, the project with the highest priority is the urgent protection of World Heritage and Aboriginal Cultural Heritage values, from the serious and irreversible degradation caused by unauthorised public intrusion across Cooper Creek.  For more than 22-years, Kuku Yalanji elders have decried the desecration of the most sacred place in the Daintree Rainforest.  The Foundation will pursue the priority purchase of the adjoining land that is providing the offending access, to protect the area through ownership and the inscription of a binding covenant upon the land title.

“Radical new approaches to matters of national environmental significance may challenge adherents to conventional methodologies, but the ratification of Australia’s innovative approach to this particular World Heritage responsibility, is a matter of historical fact – upheld by the High Court of Australia. The relative performance of this novel approach has one-hundred-percent cost-recovery from ecotourism and financial relief for the taxpayer.”
NEIL HEWETT

Constrained in its formative stages, pending registration as an environmental organisation, Foundation activities were limited to the management responsibilities of the ‘Daintree Gateway Website’, which were taken on to provide an altruistic navigational resource for travellers within the Daintree region.

Neil Hewett

Chairperson