The Biggest Gifts in Our History
Thousands of young trees growing in the Rainforest Rescue Native Nursery, Cow Bay. © Kate Koel/Rainforest Rescue
We have some news worth celebrating.
Rainforest Rescue has received a $1 million donation from a private foundation. It’s the single largest gift in our 27-year history, and it’s directed to the Daintree Oxbow specifically for property purchase.
That would be enough on its own. But there’s more.
A philanthropic foundation – a different one – has also committed $200,000 per year for three years to the Oxbow project…for property purchase.
Their largest-ever investment in Rainforest Rescue. That’s $600,000 over three years from people who looked closely at what we’re doing — and decided to back it, deeply and deliberately.
Combined, these two commitments represent $1.6 million in new funding for the Oxbow. (Now we’ve got less than $8 million to go…or thereabouts.)
We’ve never seen anything like it.
We’re genuinely moved. Not just by the scale, though that is extraordinary. But by what it says.
These visionary supporters looked at the ecological stakes, the farmers waiting for a path forward, the community that has lined up behind this project, and the World Heritage landscape that depends on what happens here. And they committed.
Seriously…and for the long term.
That kind of confidence doesn’t come from nowhere. It mirrors what we saw when 40 out of 42 public submissions supported our development application — including from Jabalbina Yalanji Aboriginal Corporation, representing the Eastern Kuku Yalanji people on whose Country this restoration would take place. When Traditional Owners, scientists, ecologists, local businesses, tourism bodies, national and local environmental organisations, and farming families all point in the same direction, serious people pay attention.
The Oxbow has that. And now it has this.
It’s also a tremendous vote of confidence in Rainforest Rescue’s ability to conceive and deliver a landscape scale project that should be undertaken…and succeed.
There is more to share soon — about what this funding enables and where the project goes next. For now we just want to sit with this for a moment and say thank you. To these donors, to our Rainforest Guardians, to everyone who has shown up for this truly special place.
The oldest rainforest on Earth is right here. And we are not done yet.
“Gifts like these don’t just fund a project…they validate one. This is what it looks like when a community, a landscape, and a conservation mission all come together. This. Is. Transformational!
We’re incredibly grateful, and we’re not slowing down.”
For the rainforests,
Branden Barber
CEO, Rainforest Rescue
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