Camera Traps – July 2026

Camera Traps – July 2026 accrued 115-cassowary sightings, 75-dingoes and 82-feral pigs.  Against the cumulative monthly average, cassowary numbers rose by 12%, dingoes increased by 86% and feral-pigs dropped by 53%.  Against July 2025, cassowary sightings soared by 140%, dingoes also elevated by 92%, whereas feral-pigs rose merely 1%.

Wanting understanding of the authorisation behind the brazen destruction of heavily protected mangroves with its prized colony of Endangered Spectacled Flying-foxes, smack-bang at the entrance to the world’s most irreplaceable World Heritage property (per unit area), I was astonished to learn that this celebrated gateway is not actually inscribed within the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area (WTWHA) and therefore outside the jurisdiction of WTMA Board approval.

Still, as at least two matters of national environmental significance are involved, Federal Ministerial approval for the widening of the road and ferry should have occurred under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act), but instead, was processed and cleared through Queensland’s state planning framework via the State Assessment and Referral Agency under the Queensland bilateral agreement for environmental assessments.

The search led to WTMA Board minutes of 30 September 2025 – wherein Chairperson Ms. Chrissy Grant asked about the proposed Goby fish project by Griffith University in Coopers (sic) Creek, specifically regarding advice given to ensure Griffith University engages with Jabalbina on culturally sensitive areas.  Cultural heritage protection was lucky to have a diligent Chairperson on the ball, but protection of World Heritage values on the freehold portion seems to have fallen on deaf ears.

This is actually freehold land within the WTWHA and Griffith University Researchers have trespassed when they crossed the northern edge of normal water-flow of Cooper Creek.

Also, the area of the study depicted within the above schematic is entirely within a declared Indigenous Sacred Site EN:C53, which the landholder of Lot 52 on SR537 is legislatively required to protect as prescribed within their Cultural Heritage Duty of Care as defined within the meaning of the QLD Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2003.

It is not within the authority of any person or organisation to veto this statutory duty of care for any reason and as the land-manager of this World Heritage Freehold property is a corporation, the penalty for failing to fulfil Cultural Heritage Duty of Care can be up to $1.375-million.  Neither is the landholder in any way indemnified from liability if any researchers are injured or killed as they fixedly scrutinise the creek-bed whilst snorkelling in this known estuarine crocodile habitat, if death or injury were found to have occurred on or from any part of the freehold land that the researchers trespassed upon.

The researchers also published that their surveys (including opportunistic surveys in these streams beyond the reaches reported here), imply that they may have trespassed even further afield and ‘collected’ rare and endemic fish from a World Heritage property without the landholder’s permission and without any constraint defined by the WTMA Board.

On another Daintree Rainforest related matter, revealed within the minutes of the Board’s 5th September 2024 minutes, director Dr. Sally Driml is recorded reporting from the Community Consultative Committee on the impact of road speeds on wildlife; whereupon the committee noted that reduced road speeds have contributed to a safer environment for cassowaries and has proposed to appeal to the Department of Transport and Main Roads requesting a reduction in the road speed in Daintree rainforest area.

Such a recommendation would appear to contradict the purpose of widening the ferry and road and also extends beyond the jurisdiction of the WTMA Board, as did the policy adopted by the Board in 1997, that future growth beyond the sustainable level of visitor use in the Daintree-Cape Tribulation area will be directed to appropriate areas south of the Daintree River.  

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 the Daintree Rainforest community custodianship and are eligible for a tax deduction under the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997.