Daintree Conservation Week!

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Salutations! We just finished a great week in the Daintree Rainforest! We started off by staying at a local ice cream company, where we participated in a reforestation project while enjoying fresh exotic fruit ice cream. We planted over 100 trees in the course of two days!

After the ice cream company, we traveled down the road to the Botanical Ark where we stayed for two days! Previously a cattle pasture with not a tree on it, the Botanical Ark is now home to over 3,000 species of rainforest plants from around the globe. We helped to pot and plant trees while also assisting in general upkeep of the property. In the evenings, we enjoyed games of ultimate frisbee and swimming in the backyard pond!

Next, we traveled to Port Douglas, where we stayed in the home of legendary conservationist John Rumney, who facilitated our whole week in the Daintree. There, we partnered with Damien Settle, who innovated the worlds fastest and most efficient carbon sequestering tree structure. Carbon sequestration is the process of trees taking in carbon through photosynthesis. Normally, trees compete for light, water and resources. This results in a limited amount of prospering trees in a given space, thus making carbon sequestration very inefficient. However, the Strangler Fig tree will fuse together with other strangler figs to create one solid mass of tree, which is the most space efficient way to grow a forest. This way, there are no empty spaces between trees, thus the carbon biomass of a tree is far greater than a normal competitive forest.

Between work sessions, we learned about the Great Barrier Reef and the threats it faces. John runs a non-profit called Great Barrier Reef Legacy, which is dedicated to preserving all of the plant and animal species that call the reef home, as well as the reef itself.

Now, we’re looking forward to a week in Cairns, where we will get our scuba diving certifications and go diving on the Great Barrier Reef!

Sending lots of love from down under!

Halle and Matt

https://www.greatbarrierreeflegacy.org/