Introduction to Reforestation

From July 16 to July 31st, 17 other undergraduate students and I from UCSB travelled to Cape Tribulation in Queensland, Australia as part of a summer program to learn about reforestation in the Daintree Rainforest, a World Heritage Site on the northeast coast of Australia bordering the Great Barrier Reef.

http://www.daintreerealestate.com.au/nqmap.html

No thanks to clear cutting for agriculture, cattle farming, tourism, and other unsustainable practices that took place primarily in the 70s and 80s, certain parts of the forest have not been able to naturally regenerate. Today, although the government has put little pressure on landowners to exercise environmentally friendly behavior and offered few to no incentives for ecological sustainability, the Daintree has seen a large increase in new plant growth, in large part due to the efforts of non-profit and volunteer organizations.

We stayed at one such organization --- the AUSTROP Research Station, run by Dr. Hugh Spencer. Dr Spencer has lived in the rainforest for over two decades dedicating his life to facilitating regeneration. He has nearly perfected the process, a process we learned about and then implemented ourselves on a plot of land approximately one hectare in size on the side of Myall Creek in Cape Tribulation.

Philip McCarty

View Reforestation Plot in a larger map

Dr. Spencer taught the group all aspects of the reforestation process from start to finish and then set us out in the field to get our hands dirty. We stomped invasive grass sprayed with pesticide, devined young trees that were restricted from growth, searched for and identified local saplings to extract, extracted the saplings and potted them for future planting, and finally planted the saplings in the plot of land we rid of weeds and invasive species. As I hope this description leads on, the reforestation process is long and tedious, not something as simple as planting a few trees from the nursery and being done with it. Dr. Spencer knows this better than anyone. That knowledge combined with his dedication to every step of reforestation is arguably why he is so successful.

Despite his success, one gaping submission in Dr. Spencer's reforestation technique is the attention to what species he is planting. "If it's a good plant: leave it. If it's a bad plant: kill it." While Dr. Spencer is capable of identifying the species he plants, he deems the scientific record-keeping of reforestation unnecessary and prefers to focus on the actual planting. Sure it is more efficient to plant as much as possible without taking down cold hard data, but it's nice to be able to have an empirical perspective on the reforestation process. For this reason I have decided to compile a guide of all the species we planted: Reforestation in Queensland, Australia: A Guide to the Local Flora of the Daintree