Page 58 - Port Douglas Magazine 35

Chrissie at one of the WTMA tree planting
BEATING HEART OF events, building forest corridors for wildlife
and resilience into the Wet Tropics.

THE WET TROPICS

WORDS by Bill Wilkie
A
holiday in tropical north Queensland isn’t complete without a visit to the Daintree.
The Daintree is at the northern end of the Wet Tropics World Heritage area,
declared in 1988 for its outstanding ecological values and biological diversity.
We caught up with Ms Chrissy Grant, the recently appointed chair of the Wet Tropics
Management Authority (WTMA).
If there is a heart of Queensland’s Wet Tropics, surely it is the Daintree. Long considered the
‘jewel in the crown’ of Queensland’s tourism sites, the Daintree is home to cassowaries and
tree-kangaroos, fan palm groves and isolated palm-tree lined beaches. It was here that many
of the early botanical discoveries brought the area to the attention of scientists in the 1960s:
Plant species so old they were labelled ‘green dinosaurs’. And it was also in the Daintree that
conservationists took a stand, staging the Daintree Blockade in 1983-4, to bring attention
to threats to the region from logging and land-clearing for agriculture, sub-divisions and
development.
60 tourismportdouglas.com.au