Passing protection onto our partners at Gurrbum Nature Refuge
Excitingly, this year we sold Gurrbum Nature Refuge to our partners the Community for Coastal and Cassowary Conservation (C4), an organisation dedicated to protecting and preserving the unique biodiversity of the Wet Tropics region. C4 co-invested with QTFN to purchase this precious property in 2019.
Over the last five years, QTFN and C4 have been hard at work to protect and restore Gurrbum, which is helping to secure and restore a critical link in Cassowary habitat within the Smith’s Gap Corridor, in Queensland’s Wet Tropics Region
This historically cleared banana plantation is being restored back to its rainforest roots thanks to the partnerships between QTFN, C4, the Gulngay and Djiru people, other conservation partners, and the wider community. Volunteers and contractors came together time and time again at community plantings to plant over 20,000 native trees across over six hectares and managing weeds across a further 10.5 hectares.
One community planting was even visited by a juvenile cassowary, moving across the planting area into the neighbouring National Park.
As the plantings grow taller than the visiting cassowaries, Gurrbum Nature Refuge is becoming a critical corridor as it connects National Parks and Conservation Park in the Mission Beach Hinterland. Since being declared a nature refuge in 2021, the property’s 15.52 hectares of lowland vine forest are now protected.
The hard work to protect and restore Gurrbum ensures it will be a sanctuary for the endangered southern cassowary into the future as C4 becomes the sole caretaker.
Gurrbum Nature Refuge is now long-term habitat that cassowaries can forage in, move through, and raise their young.
This is what the landscape first looked like when planting after it was purchased in 2019.
Plantings only up to four years later have thrived, and Gurrbum Nature Refuge is well on its way to restore and reconnect the habitat corridor.
Unveiling the Gurrbum Nature Refuge sign with our partners.
Date: 17.10.2024
Media Contact: Sarah Delahunty (gmii@qtfn.org.au)