Mossman Gorge

"Water Dragon" in one of the study plots

Golden Panda tree and Mossman River

The Mossman Gorge picnicking site is a popular tourist attraction within the Daintree Rainforest section of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Park. Since the 1980s it has attracted over 1/2 a million people every year.
However, Mossman Gorge, as a whole, has been home and of great importance to the Kuku Yalanji and the non-indigenous communities living in the gorge for much longer.
The picnic area and small trail loop is under public land jurisdiction which has largely lead to the exclusion of community members providing input on management practices and caring for country. 
The influx of tourism on this relatively small site has lead not only to new disturbance regimes within the edges of the rainforest, and to negative impacts on the community over the years. Disturbances include erosion, noise pollution, hardening and compacting of soil, introduction of invasive species, and feeding/harassing of wildlife. Tourism's impact on the community has been just as far reaching. Apart from displacing local use of the site, increased traffic makes use of the road dangerous, tourism buses would drive through the community and take pictures- taking away the community's right to privacy, and tourists would be rude or make racial slurs against locals.
All of this is now changing! Through talking to community members, opening a dialogue of understanding, and conducting research on the environmental impacts and pressures possible causing them the Park Authority and the people living in Mossman have developed a new management strategy: The Gateway Project. The Gateway Project creates control and monitoring of how many people are on site at a time, allows the Kuku Yalanji community to represent themselves on their own terms, and have the opportunity for job training, land management collaboration, and to earn revenue from tourist focused ventures like a restaurant and a walking track. The idea is to reduce impacts by having all visitors park at a new compound at the mouth of the gorge and take a shuttle bus up to the picnic/parkland. The compound will have offices for the park authority, ranger training, walking track tickets, art gallery, and a cafe. Both the compound and the walking track land are not owned by the park authority and so may have private ventures operating on them. The new Gateway to Mossman wasn't opened when we visited but will be in mid-June. There are a couple of websites though; http://www.mossmangorge.com.au/,
http://www.yalanji.com.au/
Its very exciting!

Now where did I get all this lovely information from? The credit is due to some very exceptional people: Roy Gibson a community elder, Rachael Hodges CEO of the Mossman Gorge Aboriginal community organization Bamanga Bubu Ngadimunk (BBN) both of which our class had the honor and privilege of speaking with on our visit; and Dr. Joan Bentrupperbaumer our professor for Conserving Tropical Rainforests who insists on field trips for her students and was author of the 2001/2002 Mossman Gorge Site Level Data Report ( a research report focusing on tourism and environmental psychology impacts)
They shared with us their stories and perspectives on the first part of our trip and reminded us that people are the reason behind why we do environmental impact assessments. That people may cause problems but they also hold the solutions.

Alestura lathami Bush or Scrub Turkey

With this in mind we split into groups, took our criteria, found our observation plots and began our rapid pressure-state-response assessment. Each of the groups was stationed next to a 3m x 3m plot of forest edge adjacent to the picnic area. The plot our group was stationed at was in fair condition and had some close to mature trees. The hardest part was assessing the plot with out actually getting into the and examining the plants. During our 1/2 hour or so observation time we did have visits from one of the scrub turkeys that were hanging around. It had a noticeable limp, was friendly, and had a deteriorating feather condition. Then we did a general assessment of the picnic area, river bank, and parking area. There was lots of compaction and erosion around the car park and a couple of the picnic tables where the grass wouldn't grow. But, the river was in apparent good health and soil compaction was minimal in less used areas of the picnic grounds. Overall our group came to the same conclusion that the park authority had come to: too many people using the site at one time-which leaves the site no time to recover.

After that we were able to tour the short boardwalk loop that allows you to really see the forest. And what a view! The boardwalk raises visitors off the forest floor and minimizes the edge effects so well that you really do get a sense of what walking through this rainforest would be like. This area is home to some of the oldest rainforest in Australia and the world and you can feel it. Its in the size of the trees, the complexity of the lianas (vines), epiphytes, and diversity that surrounds you. There were butterflies of all shades, shapes, and colors that fly tantalizingly close. It was like slipping into a national geographic magazine, but better because you are actually there.

Mossman River