Eligible landholders wanting a helping hand to look after their lot now apply for funding through Terrain NRM’s final round of Rainforest Resilience Grants.

Up to $20,000 is available for revegetation, habitat protection agreements and weed management.

Terrain NRM’s Tony O’Malley said the funding recognises that important habitat isn’t just located in national park and conservation areas.

“We know that landholders right across the Wet Tropics already play a large part in helping to look after the region’s natural areas, and we want to further support that,” he said. “We have contacted over 300 landholders and Traditional Owner organisations who we think are in important cassowary habitat or corridors, or might have rare rainforest types like littoral or mabi forest, to invite them to apply for a grant.”

Terrain and threatened species recovery teams – including all levels of government, scientists, traditional owners and conservation group members – have worked together to determine where landholders should be supported to help connect or buffer large habitat systems.

The grants are also open to threatened species recovery team members.

41 grants allocated in previous rounds have helped landholders to revegetate 13 hectares of land, manage 234 hectares for weeds, and protect 260 hectares of habitat.

Speewah’s Anabel and Bruce Belson are among the growing collective of landholders who have accessed a rainforest grant.

Anabel said they were very excited to be offered a grant as it coincided with the discovery of a large patch of lantana. “Our 68 hectare, mostly forested block, is right on the edge of world heritage rainforest and has important ecological value so it’s important to us to look after it – but the ongoing maintenance certainly doesn’t get easier as we get older”.

Endangered cassowary and Mabi rainforests are the winners in four new projects for the Far North.

Terrain NRM has awarded grants to Barron Catchment Care, Kuranda Conservation, C4 and the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service for work to extend wildlife corridors and create nature refuges.

Terrain’s Tony O’Malley said the $120,000 investment in rainforest restoration, protection and expansion was focused on land in the Kuranda, Tablelands, Innisfail and Tully regions.

“These projects are all in priority locations identified by the cassowary and Mabi recovery teams for revegetation, weed management and habitat protection,’’ he said. “The work will benefit a whole range of rainforest species because of the strategic locations.”

More than 100ha of private land on four properties in the Kuranda region’s Black Mountain Corridor will become nature refuges as part of the project. On the Tablelands, hundreds of trees will be planted to extend Mabi rainforest in a forestry lease area being transferred to national park, and in the Innisfail-Tully region highland-lowland wildlife corridors will be extended at Smith’s Gap and Eubenangee.

The projects are supported by Terrain NRM through funding from the Australian Government’s National Landcare Program.

Kuranda Conservation’s Jax Bergersen said her group would be working with landholders and Queensland Trust for Nature to create nature refuge agreements over large blocks of land in critical endangered cassowary habitat.

“We are working to link a very narrow part of the Wet Tropics world heritage rainforest area with prime ecological blocks of land to make a wider endangered cassowary corridor,’’ Ms Bergersen said. “We’ll be starting with four properties but there are another 20 in the wings thanks to the interest of landholders in this region.

“With ‘nature refuge’ status on land titles, rainforest can be better protected into the future. We’re aiming for a cassowary corridor stretching 100-200km from Julatten to the Barron Gorge National Park.”

C4 president Peter Rowles said his group would be revegetating another hectare of land on a property in the Smith’s Gap wildlife corridor near Tully, where more than 2000 rainforest trees have been planted since it was bought by C4 and Queensland Trust for Nature last year.