Volunteers dig in with 3500 trees
More than 150 volunteers got their hands dirty as they worked together with Rainforest Rescue to plant 3500 trees at Wonga Park in little over an hour.
Rainforest Rescue is a notfor-profit organisation, first established in 1999, that raises funds for rainforest conservation projects.
The focus of Saturday’s
planting was at Nightwings,
a 52ha property owned by Annie Schoenberger, which she is slowly converting back to forest. Her interest in regenerating rainforest was sparked by her passion for flying foxes.
“I was so disturbed finding dead wallabies on the side of the road, and then I found my first ever baby flying fox, and (caring for them) was easy compared to wallabies, so I approached Far North Queensland Wildlife Rescue, got vaccinated and that was it for me,” she said.
“Every year I have baby flying foxes to raise – they are absolutely adorable critters,
and get as attached to us as we do to them. They fly 50km a night to pollinate nightflowering trees – there are no birds or bees doing that – spreading seeds. I fell in love with them and I thought, let’s create some habitat for them, a food source and a great place to be.”
There were plenty of cane toads and cane beetles at the start of her regeneration work on the property, but she was now seeing a lot of wildlife returning, including flying foxes, whistling ducks,
butterflies, insects, lizards, birds and the biggest local bird – the cassowary.
“It’s the best thing I’ve ever done, walking through that new growth, the plants from 2015,” she said. “There’s not much weeding to do once the canopy takes over.”
Rainforest Rescue chief executive Branden Barber and the team were thrilled with Saturday’s turnout.
He said Rainforest Rescue had 40 properties, mostly home to already intact rainforest, which the
organisation had bought to protect and manage.
“We only buy properties that have intact rainforest, and are assiduous in our assessment of properties, we say we will protect intact rainforest habitat forever,” Mr Barber said. “There’s a new movement starting to gain momentum, it’s the UN Decade of Restoration, the Wet Tropics Restoration Alliance … these are all signs that people are more interested in restoration.”
Rainforest restoration
work provided more than environmental gains, as the 150-plus volunteers found on Saturday, he said.
“Sometimes you just feel so good inside because things are perfect – it was a perfect day with this broad community and new people coming together. Everything went seamlessly.”
Ms Schoenberger put it this way: “On the Sunday I had the biggest smile on my dial. And it rained all night Sunday, so the ancestors were with us.”