Is the Daintree Rainforest a natural wonder of the world?
The Daintree is not officially a natural wonder of the world, but it’s one of the natural wonders of Australia, and a must-visit for many tourists who are ticking off all the bucket list items in Australia.
The Daintree has a unique ecosystem that is special to itself.
Take a bit of the Daintree Rainforest and it would be uninhabitable in other rainforests, in the same way that foreign plant species would be uninhabitable in the Daintree. Over millions of years, the Daintree has formed its ecosystem that’s one-of-a-kind and unique to itself, due to a chain of natural events as well as an interesting climate.
Even the wildlife and the plant life rely on each other for survival in ways that are completely different to other ecosystems!
The casssowary eats and poops out the grey milkwood fruit – which helps grow new trees in the rainforest.
How the Daintree is unique
- Iconic creatures: It’s home to some of the world’s most fascinating creatures, like the Southern Cassowary or the saltwater crocodile.
- Two ecosystems meet: The Daintree has created its very own life system. It’s the only place on Earth that is home to two separate ecosystems that coexist with one another. The Great Barrier Reef and the Rainforest live next to one another.
- It’s the oldest rainforest in the world: It’s outlived the dinosaurs, and it’s thousands of years older than the Amazon rainforest
- The biggest continuing stretch of rainforest in Australia, the Daintree Rainforest, is 16 times the size of Singapore.
- There are over 30 different species of mangroves: Considering there are 80 species of mangroves in the world, and 30 of them exist in the Daintree – this is quite incredible! The structural arrangement of the Daintree Rainforest is complex and completely unique in itself.
- 7% of all bird species in the whole world live in the Daintree: Imagine all the birds in the whole world, and just how many species that exist (about 1180 bird species according to National Geographic). A whole 7% of this population is in the Daintree.
Mossman Gorge: The Daintree’s river water system
There is a gap between the high, hilly elevations in the rainforest and the lower part of the Daintree. This inclination has created a kind of ‘bubble’ in which the moisture from the rainfall is trapped. This forms a continuous river that flows through the rainforest.