Daintree Rainforest

The popular tourist destination of Mossman Gorge, some 30 km (19 mi) south of the Daintree River, is often (and again, unofficially) included in the definition.

It is a rare survivor of 120 million years of altered climatic conditions resulting from continental drift, which has reduced the extent of the original forest to a few restricted areas on the east coast.

On 29 September 2021, the eastern Kuku Yalanji people won formal ownership of 160,213 hectares (395,890 acres) of country stretching from Mossman to Cooktown, including the Daintree National Park after a historic deal was made between the traditional custodians and the Queensland Government, on top of an earlier Native Title agreement.

The summit provides expansive vistas of undisturbed forest and to the south, the skyline is dominated by the giant granite boulders of Thornton Peak – one of Queensland's highest mountains.

[13][14] Amongst the attributes provided as evidence for the World Heritage value of the Wet Tropics, which include the Daintree Rainforest, the Australian Government lists the following:[15] They preserve major stages of the earth's evolutionary history - They preserve unique, rare or superlative natural phenomena, formations or features of exceptional natural beauty – The Daintree rainforest contains important and significant habitats for conservation of biological diversity.

The Daintree Important Bird Area (IBA) is a 2,656 km2 (1,025 sq mi) tract of land that largely coincides with the northernmost part of the Wet Tropics of Queensland.

It also contains populations of the locally endemic tooth-billed and golden bowerbirds, lovely fairywrens, Macleay's, bridled, yellow-spotted and white-streaked honeyeaters, fernwrens, Atherton scrubwrens, mountain thornbills, chowchillas, Bower's shrike-thrushes, pied monarchs, Victoria's riflebirds and pale-yellow robins.