I’ve just saved a whole hectare of tropical rainforest in Ecuador. I didn’t even have to leave my desk to do it. All it took was a visit to the Rainforest Rescue website and $200 (tax-deductible!) on my credit card. Ecuador’s rainforests are being cleared at a rate of 300,000 hectares per year, including large areas of the Cloud Forests, home to the spectacled bear, jaguar, sloth, howler monkey, puma, toucan’s and thousands of other species.

Rainforest Rescue is currently purchasing Ecuadorian rainforest to create wildlife corridors between three major reserves and recently purchased another 200 hectares to be placed in a protected area. With direct donations from the public they’re also assisting with saving rainforests in Borneo and Sri Lanka as well as in Australia.

A local organisation based in Mullumbimby which is just 10 years old, Rainforest Rescue is the result of one man’s passion for the natural environment and another man’s generosity of business expertise.
Kelvin Davies, the executive officer of Rainforest Rescue, moved to the North Coast in 1994 from Melbourne.
“I’d been involved with conservation work in Victoria with the rainforest action group, trying to stop the importation of rainforest timbers from Borneo,” explains Kelvin.

“Swimming in front rainforest timber ships in the Port of Melbourne highlighted to the community where the timber they were using comes from.”

“When I moved up here I wanted to work on something more institutionalised and in 1998 I took my ideas to Dr Tony Parks, who was president of the Big Scrub Rainforest Landcare Group.
“Tony was an investment banking specialist and had held a number of prestigious positions, including Chair of Lloyds Bank NZA and positions on the boards of a number of other major companies including, locally, TP Health.”

Rainforest Rescue started out local, with projects aimed at saving and regenerating the ‘Big Scrub’ rainforest which had originally covered much of the Northern Rivers.
In 1999 Big Scrub Rainforest Day was established and is now, in its tenth year, Australia’s largest annual landcare event.

“After that we realised we could contribute to saving the Daintree in Far North Queensland,” says Kelvin.
“Many people believed it was protected as a World Heritage Area but just prior to its declaration a developer had purchased a big piece of it in the centre and converted it into a rural residential subdivision.”
“With community support we’ve currently bought back nine properties to prevent them from being developed for housing and people can assist with that by buying five square metres of Daintree for just $25 which we will then protect forever.”

Rainforest Rescue is independent of any government funding and sees its role as engaging with the community.

Part of the success of the organisation in attracting donations has been in the way they’ve packaged the possibilities to show how your money will directly benefit an area.

“Supporters can match their contribution to real, tangible action – we’ve found that’s what people want, so that’s what we offer,” says Kelvin. “We attract the support of individuals and businesses from all over Australia and all over the world,” says Kelvin. “This way people know what their money is doing directly – it’s a partnership between our organisation and the community.”

“People care but they find government processes too obscure and slow. Kelvin first became interested in the role of rainforests in protecting the environment in the late 80s. “There was a lot of publicity about the hole in the ozone layer and the burning of the Amazon was being shown on prime-time TV,” he says.

“It concerned me greatly that we were causing so many species to become extinct when we didn’t even know what they were.”

“Tropical rainforests are home to 50% of the worlds remaining species and also provide essential services including rainfall generation, climate regulation and importantly carbon sequestration. Every person on the planet benefits from these services, but none of us pay for them,” he said.
“The destruction and burning of the worlds rainforests causes 18 to 25 per cent of climate change.”
“If we lose our rainforests we’ve lost the battle – saving rainforests is one of the least expensive ways of fighting global warming; just keep the carbon in the trees.”

While there is certainly more rainforest remaining had he not put energy into developing Rainforest Rescue Kelvin believes his most important achievement has been building an organisation that provides opportunities for others to help.

“I know that people don’t want to see our rainforests destroyed.”
For your chance to save some rainforest in these sensitive areas phone 02 6684 4360 or visit www.rainforestrescue.org.au