There’s an ancient cousin of the eucalypts, Stockwellia quadrifida, found only on Queensland’s highest mountain, Bartle Frere. Podocarpus dispermus, a Gondwanan conifer whose bright red berries are spread by cassowaries and musky rat-kangaroos. And Ficus crassipes, a banana fig that starts life as a seedling in the rainforest canopy then sends its roots cascading to the ground.
They’re among 500 mature trees at far north Queensland’s Atherton Arboretum, a CSIRO-owned haven to rare species from the nearby wet tropics, Cape York, the Gulf of Carpentaria and the Northern Territory.
The 3.64-hectare tree garden was established in 1971 by the biologists Geoff Stocker, Bernie Hyland and Tony Irvine and became an important part of the Australian National Herbarium.
Being able to see, touch and smell specimens of rare and endemic trees from remote and rugged locations has helped generations of naturalists and been an invaluable resource for research.
CSIRO closed public access to the site in October last year, alarming an Atherton-based botanist, Gemma Horner, who thought it was important the community knew what was going on behind closed doors.
It wasn’t until last month she heard that the national scientific agency was planning to sell the land. CSIRO has confirmed the site has been “vacated in preparation for divestment”, and Guardian Australia understands that as a freehold site there would be no restrictions on its sale. This has prompted Horner to fear it may be sold to a private developer and cleared for residential housing.
“As members of the local community, we should be concerned about conserving this site for both present and future generations,” she says.
“The removal of the arboretum would be a great loss to the region, not only of 50 years of research, education and effort in establishing a diverse variety of tropical species by some of the region’s esteemed botanists and scientists, but also the loss of a part of Australia’s tropical rainforest research history.”
Horner says the arboretum could potentially qualify for protection under the Queensland heritage register – but it cannot be registered while under commonwealth ownership.
Rebel Warren, a former CSIRO technician who worked at the site for two decades before being made redundant, is also calling for the arboretum to be preserved.
“I think that’s the general consensus of the people in this area,” she says. “They [do] not want to lose that site. And there’s the historical value of the work that was done there. It was an important institution for this town.”
A CSIRO spokesperson said: “CSIRO’s Atherton site is not on the market and we are not inviting expressions of interest for sale. The site remains part of our property portfolio, although the site has now been vacated in preparation for divestment.”
The agency was liaising with government departments in seeking the required approvals to put the site on the market, the spokesperson said.
Last year the local state MP, Shane Knuth, raised concern in parliament about the loss of the site.
His office said last week that it had been informed by the office of the federal MP, Bob Katter, that an initial deal between the federal and state governments had fallen through.
Knuth says the site should be handed to the Tablelands community to preserve and maintain the collection. “This site holds an environmental and historical significance that, I believe, needs to be preserved for generations to come,” he says.
Tablelands Regional Council has also advocated for the protection of the arboretum.
“We’re aware discussions are taking place about the site’s future and remain positive that any potential sale will preserve the arboretum given its importance to our local history and scientific identity,” a spokesperson said.
Warren agrees that the site should be given to the community: “It can be turned into a beautiful botanical garden without very much work, because the trees are already tagged with their species names.
“Then you could set up a little museum of the history of forestry in the area, and the history of CSIRO and the projects that were done on the Tablelands. You could even put in a coffee shop that sells some souvenirs and a cup of coffee and cake.”
