Australia’s Daintree rainforest is a UNESCO World Heritage site and is believed to be 180 million years old, with fossils and relics dating back to the great Gondwanan forests that covered what is now Australia and parts of Antarctica before the continents split apart 50 to 100 million years ago.
As such, the rainforest “presents an unparalleled record of the ecological and evolutionary processes that shaped the flora and fauna of Australia”, says Unesco.
The Eastern Kuku Yalanji people, the Aboriginal custodians of the land, are “one of the world’s oldest living cultures”, and they recently entered into an agreement to jointly manage the lands with the Queensland state government before eventually taking over sole management. The agreement includes three other national parks including Cedar Bay (Ngalba Bulal), Black Mountain (Kalkajaka) and Hope Islands – a combined area of over 160,000 hectares.
This historic restoration of the land to the descendants of the original inhabitants will hopefully serve as a model for other countries across the globe and inspire more restorations of indigenous land.
Video source: France 24 English channel on Youtube
Hat tip: Good News Network
