Home | 16 Degrees South

Facilitating Authentic Rainforest Revegetation in the Daintree Region of Far North Queensland, Australia.

About Us

Sixteen Degrees South Inc. was formed in 2022 as a not-for-profit charity to facilitate grants, donations, and corporate sponsorship for our contractors to revegetate authentic tropical rainforest in the Daintree and greater Daintree regions of the Wet Tropics Area, Australia.

Our principle contractors are Daintree Life, who have over ten years total experience in rainforest revegetation across multiple projects: delivering traceable and tangible outcomes, with over 45,000 trees planted to date.

Our mission is to work with all relevant local stakeholders to revegetate weedy or cleared areas of land on local government, state government and private land, in accordance with regional pre-clearing ecosystem mapping to create and restore indigenous forest cover and restore ecological function.

Our Process

Below is a brief three-step roadmap of our process.

Planning

Working with landowners and our contractors, Sixteen Degrees South liaises, maps and plans projects to ensure successful delivery and successful project outcomes. It usually starts with landowners contacting us to discuss whether we can facilitate revegetation on part of their properties. From there, a site visit determines feasibility, mapping the area with GPS, and creating a shapefile. This allows us to accurately determine numbers and species mix required.

Outcomes

Using the maximum diversity planting method, successful outcomes are judged by recreation of pre-clearing local rainforest ecosystems, creating a diverse habitat and a highly productive food resource for local wildlife. This not only includes the large iconic species such as Cassowaries and Tree-kangaroos, but a whole host of mammal, bird, reptile and invertebrate species. For instance, all of our planting areas contain Pink euodias - the only food tree for the Ulysses blue butterfly.

Delivery

Once mapping, planning, research and costings are completed, we work with our principle contractors to finance, complete and maintain revegetation projects in a locally credible and timely manner. During the process, photopoints are set up and sample plots are established to monitor density and tree growth via our partnership with Open Forest Protocol to accurately measure growth and carbon sequestration. This data is freely available, open and transparent via their website.

We are a registered charity, registered with the ACNC.

How can you Contribute?

We are dedicated to creating projects that produce tangible outcomes for helping combat climate change and provide habitat and food resource for our wildlife. Join us in making a genuine positive impact by forming a funding partnership with us. Your contributions will directly allow us to plant trees and maintain them on your behalf via our contractors. We provide transparent proof of planting and progress via several means to ensure that your contributions have a real and lasting legacy.

To find out more, and join the journey, we invite you to contact us via email below.

Email Us

Meet the Team

Chairperson

Dave Pinson

Dave was born in the UK where he developed an early life-long fascination with the natural world, before moving to Australia and furthering a deep interest in conservation. Dave’s background and skills include surveying, mapping, environmental compliance, liaising and planning, website design, and rainforest revegetation. Dave is a wildlife carer specialising in bats and is the author of The Flying-fox Manual (a handbook for carers).

Dave is a keen photographer, registered drone pilot, and is on a steep learning curve with videography.

Treasurer

Rabecca Lynch

Rebecca has had a love of the natural world for as long as she can remember. She studied Natural Resource Management and started her career at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary in 2000, while running her own dog behaviour & training business. Rabecca relocated to FNQ in 2013, and has lived here ever since. Her current role is Wildlife Group Manager for the CaPTA Group and shares her working time between three wildlife parks in the Cairns region.

Apart from a busy working life, Rabecca is also the proud mother of five children.

Executive Member

Dr. Paul Smith MB BS

Paul has been a GP in the Melbourne, Bayside Group Practice for over 40 years, and had a love of Australian flora and fauna since childhood. Paul is a member of several conservation organisations, and supports his wife Bev in managing their Bayside Wildlife Shelter - specialising in the rescue and rehabilitation of Grey-headed flying-foxes. As a GP, Paul has been working to improve the immunity of bat carers to Australian Bat Lyssavirus.

One of Paul's hobbies has been establishing a native garden to support local wildlife.

Vice-chair

Gary Bressan

Gary has had a keen interest in wildlife habitat conservation for more than 20 years. In 2004 he developed and managed a revegetation project of the Cascades Gardens (Gold Coast) flying-fox campsite, including installation of interpretative signage. Since then, he has provided in-kind support to various similar projects. Gary’s professional background is structural engineering in Australia and the Middle East.

Gary has a passion for making fresh pasta and other traditional family Italian recipes from his childhood.

Secretary

Connie Pinson

Connie was born and grew up in rural NSW, where in adult life she developed a love of wildlife and a solid appreciation of conservation principles and values. Connie’s professional background and skills include office administration, fundraising, successful grant application writing, wildlife rehabilitation, and several times a year is invited to present flying-fox wildlife rehabilitation courses and workshops in multiple states.

In her spare time, Connie loves nature photography, particularly regarding fungi and dragonflies.