The Daintree Rainforest is a 1,200 square mile tropical rainforest on Australia’s east coast in Queensland. It was named after Richard Daintree, an Australian geologist and photographer who lived in the nineteenth century. Daintree Rainforest includes Daintree National Park, some State Forest, and privately owned land. The Daintree Rainforest ecosystem is one of the most complex in the world, and it is Australia’s longest continuous tropical rainforest. The Daintree Rainforest is part of the Wet Tropics of Queensland World Heritage Site, which was designated by UNESCO in 2015.
Interesting facts about Daintree Rainforest:
Visitors to the Daintree Rainforest can depart from Port Douglas, Cairns, Cape Tribulation, or Cooktown.
The age of the Daintree Rainforest is estimated to be at least 180 million years. As a result, Daintree would be the world’s oldest tropical rainforest.
Both the Daintree Rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef are UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and they are the only two in the world that meet.
The Daintree Rainforest is home to some of the world’s largest tropical trees, including the Bull Kauri.
Despite its World Heritage status, the Daintree Rainforest still faces threats such as climate change, the introduction of feral animals into the rainforest, weed growth, and the development of residential areas, which introduces a whole new set of problems into the ecosystem.
The Daintree Rainforest contains over 3,000 plant species, with over 395 of them classified as rare or threatened.
Cassowaries, Bennet’s tree kangaroos, Ulysses butterflies, and white lipped tree frogs are among the rare species found in the Daintree Rainforest.
More than 12,000 insect species live in the Daintree Rainforest.
The Daintree Rainforest is home to 34% of all mammal species found in Australia.
Daintree Rainforest is home to 40 percent of Australia’s birds, 28 percent of its frogs, and 65 percent of its ferns.
The Kuku Yalanji were the traditional inhabitants of the Daintree Rainforest.
There are plants that can only exist in the Daintree Rainforest and cannot exist anywhere else on the planet.
The Daintree Rainforest was threatened by logging and other activities in the 1980s, but protection was created when it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Observing saltwater crocodiles is a popular activity in Daintree. Visitors can also go on day trips, river cruises, and four wheel drives through the forest.
The Daintree Rainforest is tens of millions of years older than the Amazon Rainforest.
Every year, at least 400,000 people visit the Daintree Rainforest.
The idiot fruit, a rare flowering plant considered to be the most primitive of its kind, is one of the most famous plants of the Daintree Rainforest. It was discovered in 1970 and provided further evidence of the rainforest’s age.
The ancient plants that grow in the Daintree Rainforest are known as ‘Green Dinosaurs.’
The Daintree Rainforest is home to venomous snakes, colorful birds, frogs, mammals, insects, lizards, and a variety of scaly reptiles.
