Rainforest restoration to complete the Rock Road Wildlife Corridor

Rainforest restoration to complete the Rock Road Wildlife Corridor is an environmental planting project located in Tarzali, approximately 20 kilometres southeast of Atherton in Far North Queensland. It was registered in November 2022 and covers an area of 63.79 hectares.

Environmental planting projects under the Carbon Farming Initiative involve establishing permanent forest cover by planting a mix of native tree or mallee species. Standard requirements for this methodology dictate that the trees must be planted at a sufficient density to eventually reach a height of at least two metres and achieve a minimum crown cover of 20% over the land.

The Atherton Tablelands region has historically been extensively cleared for agriculture, predominantly for dairy and beef cattle grazing. The project site itself consists of disused agricultural pasture. The environment is part of the upland wet tropics, characterised by high rainfall, typically receiving between 1,300mm and 1,600mm annually, and features highly fertile basalt soils formed from ancient volcanic activity.

This project is supported by a $2.95 million, 16-year partnership with the Queensland Government's Land Restoration Fund. Described as the largest rainforest restoration project ever undertaken in the region, it aims to plant 204,000 trees to create a 1.8-kilometre-long wildlife corridor. Once established, this corridor will reconnect the largest isolated fragment of intact high-altitude tropical rainforest on the Tablelands back to the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area. The reforestation is specifically designed to provide a critical cool-climate refuge for vulnerable native wildlife, including the Lumholtz's tree-kangaroo, the Green Ringtail Possum, and the Lemuroid Ringtail Possum.