The Australian Rainforest

When thinking of destruction of the rainforest most people think about poor people living in Africa, South- or Central America who need wood, plants or meat from the rainforest just to get by. As far as I – as someone who is just interested in nature and reads /watches a lot concerning rainforests and animals – can judge that most people would think that all Australians are walthy and thus not a single Australian being would do any harm to this rainforests. They think that although mankind did “some” harm to nature a lot of decades ago, the Australian vegetation already starts recovering. However as footage from the documentary movies “Extinct Episode 1 The Dodo”, “Animal X Natural Mystery Unit: The Mystery of the Thylacine” and “Extinct Episode 6 The Tasmanian Tiger” shows, the rainforest and its habitants are far from being save. In “Animal X Natural Mystery Unit: The Mystery of the Thylacine” they showed footage of a bush fire that occured just some years ago. In all the three of these movies they showed that wild goats, boars, feral cats, rats and bunnies – that by the way wouldn’t be there if it hadn’t been for European settlers who brought them there by ship – still are threatening to erase the population of many birds living there – especially flightless ones. As described in “Extinct Episode 1” they by the way already did make some birds go extinct, like e.g. the dodo. As it seems there still are many things to do to get this pest as well as the forest fires under control.

I know I used to have an extra rubrique for the critically endangered hairy – nosed wombat and I also know that they don’t live in rainforests. Since I had to spare some space again and since they at least are to be found in the same country – Queensland – I just decided to remove the photo of this animal and to remove the information under this photo:
“http://www.wombatfoundation.com.au/” and “http://www.wildlife.org.au/wildlife/speciesprofile/mammals/northern_hairy_nosed_wombat.html” belong to two organisations that give you the chance of getting involved in the protection of the 110 more or less remaining individuals.
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I just didn’t want my first post under this photo to fall into oblivion, so: This photo shows a part of the rainforest in Queensland.
If you want to know more about the rainforest there and maybe even want to help, you should visit this website:”http://www.arf.net.au/”.

A friend asked me to tell you about the people living there aswell and so I do now. The following is completely quoted from “www.wikipedia.org”: Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands and the descendants of these peoples. Indigenous Australians are distinguished as either Aboriginal people or Torres Strait Islanders, who currently together make up about 2.7% of Australia’s population.
The Torres Strait Islanders are indigenous to the Torres Strait Islands, which are at the northern-most tip of Queensland near Papua New Guinea. The term “Aboriginal” has traditionally been applied to indigenous inhabitants of mainland Australia, Tasmania, and some of the other adjacent islands.
The earliest definite human remains found to date are that of Mungo Man, which have been dated at about 40,000 years old, but the time of arrival of the ancestors of Indigenous Australians is a matter of debate among researchers, with estimates ranging as high as 125,000 years ago.
There is great diversity among different Indigenous communities and societies in Australia, each with its own unique mixture of cultures, customs and languages. In present day Australia these groups are further divided into local communities.
Although there were over 250-300 spoken languages with 600 dialects at the start of European settlement, fewer than 200 of these remain in use–and all but 20 are considered to be endangered. Aborigines today mostly speak English, with Aboriginal phrases and words being added to create Australian Aboriginal English.
The population of Indigenous Australians at the time of permanent European settlement has been estimated at between 318,000 and 750,000, with the distribution being similar to that of the current Australian population, with the majority living in the south-east, centred along the Murray River.

It sure would be great to cross a rainforest like this one with all of the interesting plants and animals there. Sure I know that a trip through this forest could be very dangerous, too, but this just makes the whole thing more exciting, doesn’t it? :D

So do I! In my opinion the whole continent is beautiful and interesting!