Welcome
Kuranda Envirocare is a community organisation based in Kuranda in Far North Queensland, Australia. We seek to value and protect the natural environment of Kuranda and its environs through working to conserve and repair biodiversity in the area, and educating the community to do likewise.
Kuranda is known as 'the village in the rainforest', and is familiar to millions of people from all over the world who have visited as tourists. It lies at the top of the range inland from Cairns, and is accessible by road, rail (a tourist train operates daily) and by Skyrail, one of the world's longest cable car links. The altitude of about 400 metres can have quite an impact on temperature, and Kuranda is sometimes referred to as Cairns' 'air-conditioned suburb'.
In fact Kuranda is part of the Mareeba Shire, a vast area of dry inland country with an eastern boundary of rainforested hills. Situated at the head of the Barron Gorge, Kuranda is the stop-off point for visiting the famous Barron Falls. In past years it was known as 'the honeymoon capital of Australia'. It is also famous for the butterflies that are found here; probaby the greatest variety in the country. In the past the area produced tropical crops like coffee, and pineapples, with some grazing in cleared areas. Now it has become a popular residential area, with a population approaching 5000 people. It was famous during the 1970's for its counterculture communes, and is also home to a significant number of aboriginal Australians, many from the local Tjapukai rainforest tribe.
While the rainforest surrounds of Kuranda are valued for their tourist appeal, they are under constant threat from inappropriate development. Plans to establish an urban community of perhaps 10,000 people at Myola, just upriver from Kuranda, highlight the pressures on this vulnerable ecosystem. The planned upgrade of the Kuranda Range road necessary to support this urban expansion also causes concern to many Kuranda residents.
Kuranda Envirocare has a special commitment to preserving and strengthening the Envirolink Corridor, a 10 kilometre arc of remnant rainforest vegetation south and west of Kuranda, linking World Heritage listed rainforests north and south of Kuranda. [See Map] The Barron River Gorge divides the Wet Tropics rainforest at this point. Cairns city has expanded to the mouth of the gorge, while Kuranda is situated above the Barron Falls, each effectivly blocking the movement of wildlife around the ends of the gorge. The envirolink corridor passes through freehold and leasehold land around this constriction, and has a special significance for maintaining connectivity between separated populations of animals such as the endangered Southern Cassowary.
Kuranda Envirocare, through regular working bees and operation of a native plant nursery, is restoring the most vulnerable sections of the Envirolink corridor.
Photo: Envirocare volunteers plant a steep bank on the Barron River, where the original rainforest has been replaced by open forest due to clearing and burning during the past hundred years.
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