Words by Kaleigh Wisman, Images by Jon Sturge

The sweat! The sun! The bugs! But the trees, my goodness, the trees! Tree planting isn’t easy, but it’s worth it.

This June, my partner Jon and I had the opportunity to do some re-generation work in the Daintree for Rainforest Rescue. We worked alongside David Cook, the Daintree Conservation Project Officer (a lovely man), as well as Conservation Volunteers Australia (a diverse group of eager planters) as we planted 4,000 trees over two weeks. We planted two sites: one of which was a residential property that had been bought back by the Queensland Government; the other site was a privately owned and inhabited site that was mostly covered in Guinea Grass, a weed which the owner was more than happy to replace with rainforest trees.

There were many different native species of trees that we planted on each property, inter-mingling them all to try and re-create the biodiversity already found in untouched areas of the Daintree. The trees were just seedlings, “babies” as David Cook calls them, and each one needed to be planted with care. The gentler you are with the trees the more likely they are to survive, so we did our best to nurture the seedlings as they were introduced to their new homes.

The trees may be small when they start out, but they do grow quickly in the tropical climate. We visited sites that Rainforest Rescue planted over a year ago, and the progress is amazing. The best part is: the trees aren’t going anywhere. Ever. I only wish I could live for a few hundred years so I could see these re-generated areas turn into the lush rainforest areas that surround them; filled with all kinds of wildlife. On one of the sites we were lucky enough to see a male cassowary and his two babies one morning as they poked around the newly planted trees finding fallen cassowary plums to munch on. If I come back as a cassowary in my next life, I know I will most definitely make my home amongst some of the trees that we’ve planted.

As a couple of city folk who walked into the Plant a Rainforest Project without too much tree experience, we feel really proud and excited about what we were able to accomplish in two weeks. The entire project is so simple and effective and it’s run by a great group of dedicated and passionate people. Time and money raised by Rainforest Rescue is directly translated into putting trees in the ground—ground that really needs trees. It doesn’t get much more simple than that.