The Daintree Rainforest is in Australia, on the northeastern coast of Queensland. It stretches from the Daintree River toward Cooktown, north of Cairns, and forms part of the Wet Tropics of Queensland World Heritage Area.
The rainforest is famous for its exceptional age and biological history. The broader Wet Tropics contains rainforest communities that have persisted for roughly 100 million years or more, surviving major changes in climate and continental geography. This is why the Daintree is often described as one of the oldest continuously surviving tropical rainforests on Earth.
“Oldest rainforest” can be misleading: scientists compare different definitions, such as the age of the forest ecosystem, the age of individual plant lineages, or uninterrupted forest cover. The Amazon is much larger and more biodiverse overall, but it is not generally credited with the same ancient continuity claim.
The Daintree also has unusual wildlife, including the endangered southern cassowary and Boyd’s forest dragon. Its location beside the Great Barrier Reef makes it notable as a place where two major natural World Heritage environments meet.