Country in care · Daintree National Park · Eastern Kuku Yalanji custodianship
The Daintree returns home — and the work begins again.
In 2022 the Daintree National Park was handed back to Eastern Kuku Yalanji custodians, with management held by Jabalbina Aboriginal Corporation. One of the oldest rainforests on Earth — alive, contiguous, and now under the care it had waited millennia to come home to.
Daintree National Park (CYPAL) · 112,072 ha
One polygon. One of the oldest continuously living forests on Earth.
A relationship older than maps
The forest and the people who know it
Eastern Kuku Yalanji families have walked, hunted, fished, and managed this forest for tens of thousands of years. The fire knowledge, the seed knowledge, the river knowledge — it never left. What changed in 2022 is who carries the management authority on paper.
The handover, 2022
160,213 hectares, returned
Title and management of the Daintree, Ngalba-bulal, Black Mountain and Hope Islands national parks were transferred to Eastern Kuku Yalanji custodians under joint-management agreements with the Queensland Government. Jabalbina Aboriginal Corporation now holds the day-to-day management role.
What follows is the hard part
Holding the asset standing
A national park doesn't pay its own way. Rangers cost money. Fire management, invasive species, infrastructure, visitor logistics — the bills don't stop. Standing forest is, by every Western metric, the hardest asset class to retain. The country needs the people; the people need a model for the country to keep standing.
What Land IP carries
A clear digital record of what the land is doing
Boundaries, cover, fire history, water — the data layer that supports stewardship decisions without making them. Land IP is not a director here. It is a record and a relay. The work belongs to the people on country; the system tells the outside world what the land is, in terms a funder, an agency, or a partner can actually read.
Returning country was the historic act. Holding it as a living, viable asset is the work that follows — and a model the wider world has barely begun to understand.
