South Endeavour Trust

Dirrans End

Dirrans End is an 80 hectare property directly adjoining the Herberton Range National Park section of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area. The property consists of 40 hectares of world heritage quality rainforest with the remainder being pasture.

South Endeavour purchased Dirrans End in early 2014 for the specific purpose of securing the completion of the State and Nationally significant Rock Road Wildlife Corridor.

The Rock Road Wildlife Corridor is one of the most ambitious rainforest restoration projects on the Atherton Tablelands. It joins the largest rainforest remnant on the Tablelands, the Hypipamee Outlier, to the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area. The Outlier consists of almost 1000 hectares of endangered high altitude rainforest on basalt.

This rainforest is home to a remarkable assemblage of mammals, birds and amphibians many of which are endemic to the high altitude rainforests and whose conservation is of national significance.

The Map at right shows Dirrans End in the context of the Rock Road Wildlife Corridor and the progress of rainforest restorastion in the corridor to date

The forest provides habitat for an incredible range of nationally endangered species:

Southern Cassowary Casuarius casuarius johnsonii
Spotted-Tailed Quoll Dasyurus maculatus gracilis
Greater Large-eared Horseshoe Bat Rhinolophus philippinensis
Torrent Tree Frog Litoria nannotis

Common Mistfrog Litoria rheocola
Lace Eyed Tree Frog, Australian Lacelid Nyctimystes dayi
Spectacled Flying-Fox Pteropus conspicillatus (vulnerable)
Grey Headed Flying-Fox Pteropus poliocephalus (vulnerable)

A further feature of the forest is its extremely diverse assemblage of arboreal mammals. There are six possum species present. Three of these are listed as Near Threatened. These are:

Lemuroid Ringtail Possum Hemibelideus lemuroides
Green Ringtail Possum Pseudochirops archeri
Herbert River Ringtail Possum Pseudochirulus herbertensis

The high altitude rainforest is also prime breeding habitat for Lumholtz's Tree Kangaroo Dendrolagus lumholtzi.

The forest provides habitat for thirteen bird species endemic to the Wet Tropics, six of which are restricted to the high altitude rainforest. These species are:

Lesser Sooty Owl Tyto multipunctata
Mountain Thornbill Acanthiza katherina
Fernwren Oreoscopus gutturalis
Atherton Scrubwren Sericornis keri
Bridled Honeyeater Bolemoreus frenatus
Macleay's Honeyeater Xanthotis macleayanus
Chowchilla Orthonyx spaldingii

Bower's Shrike-thrush Colluricincla boweri
Victoria's Riflebird Ptiloris victoriae
Golden Bowerbird Amblyornis newtonianus
Toothbilled Bowerbird Scenopoeetes dentirostris
Grey-headed Robin Heteromyias albispecularis
Pied Monarch Arses kaupi

South Endeavour's Carabeen Creek reserve is the largest private rainforest holding in the Hypipamee Outlier and it has given us a firsthand appreciation of the need to provide a permanent and meaningful connection to the forests of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area. Not only will this provide a much larger and more robust connected habitat for these species to survive and thrive, but it is also essential to provide for movement of highly temperature sensitive species such as the Lemuroid Ringtail Possum. This wonderful animal is so sensitive to sustained high temperatures that it could well be the first Australian mammal to be rendered extinct by climate change.

South Endeavour purchased Dirrans End to provide absolute certainty that the Rock Road Corridor can be completed and sec

ured for all time. Our long term plan is to see rainforest cover restored over a total of 21 hectares of pastureland on Dirrans End. Of this, an area of 12 hectares is of critical importance for the corridor. Fortunately 4 hectares has already been planted with a diverse array of local rainforest species. The other 8

hectares is our current priority focus for the property. A further 11 hectares of rainforest restoration is planned, but this is to provide a more robust buffer for both the corridor and the World Heritage Area rather than being critical to the corridor itself.

The Map at right shows our current and planned rainforest restoration areas at Dirrans End. Restoration of the area shown in blue is absolutely critical to the completion of the whole Rock road Wildlife Corridor and this is now our highest priority for restoration aactivities

Dirrans End Reserve 2015

Working with a grand coalition of local partners, to date we have planted out 9 hectares of rainforest in the corridor on our Lemuroid Leap reserve and we will be planting a further 5.2 hectares on this reserve over the 2016 and 2017 wet seasons. This has been a massive and very expensive undertaking, but we are very fortunate to be the beneficiary of the experience that our partners who, over the past 30 years, have built up a wealth of knowledge as to how to quickly and effectively restore Wet Tropics pastureland back to rainforest. Our partners in these projects include: The Wet Tropics Management Authority, the Queensland Department of the Environment, the Tablelands Regional Council, community groups TREAT and the Tree Kangaroo and Mammal Group, and Conservation Volunteers Australia. In addition Ergon Energy donated and erected two poles that will be shortly fitted out with a rope bridge for a short aerial possum crossing of Kenny Road.

A recent wildlife survey on Lemuroid Leap found that Lumholtz's Tree Kangaroos and some of the rainforest possums were already utilizing replanted forest only three years old.

We are now moving to reafforest the critical 8 hectare area on Dirrans End. Once we have successfully restored rainforest cover to this area we will have a minimum 250 metres width of rainforest for the entire length of the corridor.

The revegetation of one hectare of rainforest requires the planting of at least 3,500 trees and at least three years of labour intensive maintenance. The latter includes watering young seedlings during dry spells and herbicide application by skilled operators to suppress competition from introduced pasture grasses. The all up cost of this is around $40,000 per hectare.

This means that our priority Dirrans End project will cost in the vicinity of $250,000. South Endeavour is totally committed to completing this project as money and resources allow. We are currently very actively seeking grant funding to assist in this and to speed up the whole project.