MANGROVES

Mangroves are the most deceptive of all habitats. These briny margins are part freshwater, part ocean, part land. Highly specialized plants, animals, insects and birds inhabit the mangroves - all adapted to the salty-fresh water that characterizes this habitat.

The mangrove is nursery and shelter for young animals not yet ready for the pressures of predator and prey in the river, reef and deep ocean environments of the Daintree. Erosion, pollution, dredging and draining of the mangroves threatens endangered species that spend their entire lives here, and jeopardizes fish that hatch among the mangrove tree roots and spend their adult lives 100 miles out to sea.

Daintree Mangrove species are among the most intricate and unusual in the world. Species like the Apollo Jewel Butterfly and the Ant Plant depend exclusively on the forests of paperbark that characterize the Daintree Mangroves.