Protecting the Daintree Rainforest

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1. Destroying the habitat of different plants and animals, they no longer have a place to live. Their food source and nutrients are taken away and have nowhere else to go. These organisms will die out and there will be a loss in the diversity of that ecosystem. That ecosystem can then start to crumble as the habitats are taken away and the plants and animals have no home. With no habitat in which the organisms can live in, there is going to be very little diversity.

2. a) The Daintree rainforest at Cape Tribulation, in far north Queensland is diverse in many ways. It holds 12 of the 19 primitive plant families in the world (Cairns Today, 2007). The forest covers an area of 1100 square kilometres and is approximately eighty kilometres wide. This dense and luxuriant rainforest has the greatest diversity than any other in Australia and many in the world. The Daintree is also the home of rare and threatened of being extinct plant and animal species. The importance of this ecosystem is the very high. This ecosystem contributes to the overall health of this plant in many ways. The diversity contributes in the breakdown of pollution and helps to control the climate to name a few. This rainforest also is a great ‘carbon sink’. It has many photosynthesising plants and this allows the control of carbon dioxide (CO2). The plants take in the CO2 from the atmosphere and return oxygen (O2)

b) Logging has impacted this special ecosystem. There are trees that are hundreds of years old and their timber is being pushed to be sold for high prices. After World War 2 the Australian economy was booming and timber was in demand. A number of timber mills where made near the Daintree for the purpose of cutting down the forest for the use in infra...

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...and are selling their land back to the government. The government has been slow to act and past government parties have been in favour of cutting the rainforest down. I think that the efforts to save the Daintree forest has been good but the government will have to keep buying back that land to make up for what happened to the forest before it was World Heritage listed.

Works Cited

http://www.daintreerainforest.com/location/Daintree/listingResultsView.html?categoryId=233

http://www.daintreevillage.asn.au/daintree_rainforest.html

http://www.sgaonline.org.au/?p=726

http://www.therainforests.info/landscape/daintree.htm

http://www.daintreevillage.asn.au/mangroves.html

http://www.globalissues.org/article/170/why-is-biodiversity-important-who-cares

http://www.green.net.au/quoll/forests/daintree.html

http://www.daintreecoast.com/isiospermum.html

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