Ancient forests, modern climate solutions
With philanthropic support from the Bob Brown Foundation, Professor Brendan Mackey, Dr Heather Keith and Dr Tek Raj Bhatt from Griffith’s Climate Action Beacon have revealed vital data on the ecosystem carbon stored in the Takayna rainforest of Tasmania, offering new insights to strengthen climate policies and protect these ancient forests.
Our native forests, especially large intact landscapes like Takayna, drawdown and store vast amounts of carbon. Protecting Takayna keeps that carbon out of the atmosphere and helps prevent more climate change.
Professor Brendan Mackey
Takayna, in north-western Tasmania, contains the last remaining and largest intact temperate rainforest in the Southern Hemisphere, home to some of the world’s most carbon-rich and ecologically diverse forests. Spanning over 5,000 square kilometres, this ancient wilderness includes cool temperate rainforest and wet eucalypt forest and provides critical habitat for threatened species such as the masked owl, the wedge-tailed eagle and the giant freshwater crayfish. It has been identified as having multiple World Heritage values.
However, Takayna’s ecological integrity is under threat from commercial and industrial scale logging and mining. Through the Takayna Forest Carbon Project, Professor Mackey’s team is building a comprehensive picture of the forest’s carbon stocks. Using satellite and airborne LiDAR data, validated by field and drone-based measurements, the team has mapped the forest canopy in unprecedented detail.
These data will underpin future phases of the project, which aim to calculate in a more granular way the total carbon stored in living and dead biomass, and use these in turn to estimate the environmental and economic value of protecting Takayna. These insights will support a bold new policy proposal: recognising Takayna and other native forests as “National Strategic Climate Reserves”.
Griffith University is committed to driving climate action grounded in science. With donor support, we are revealing the true value of these native forests and Australia’s other irreplaceable ecosystems - and building the case to protect them for generations to come.
More than $100 million of philanthropy has already been secured to create a brighter future for all.
Read more impact stories
Brighter Future scholarship recipient
Jake Philpott’s interest in physiotherapy is very personal. When he was just three, his father sustained a back injury that led to a lifetime of chronic pain and physical disability. To make matters worse, the family didn’t have access to adequate healthcare.
Advancing outcomes for autistic children
As young parents, Elga and David Dyer had no idea what to expect with a newborn. Their journey to diagnosis and their lived experience with autism led to the development of a scholarship committed to training the next generation of autism researchers.
Renewed hope for schizophrenia sufferers
This innovative research is paving the way for a better future for schizophrenia sufferers, developing potential new drugs and treatments using patient-derived stem cells, thanks to a donation from a private donor.