Welcome to the Rainforest Information Centre
The Rainforest Information Centre is a grassroots, volunteer-based not-for-profit organisation dedicated to the protection of the Earth's remaining rainforests, in partnership with Indigenous and local communities who depend on them.
Over four decades we have coordinated campaigns, supported frontline activists and helped communities to build sustainable alternatives to rainforest destruction, in Australia and all over the world.
If you are using phone view, hit the three little green lines for a menu of our campaigns, projects, history, deep ecology events, newsletters and how to get involved!
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We need your HELP to SAVE BULGA FOREST!
2023 is off to an intense start for the locals at Bulga Forest, west of Port Macquarie on the mid-north coast of NSW, who are blockading to prevent the latest attempt to log the area. Read more here and here.
The community will do what they can to protect the forest from destruction, but they can’t do it alone. They have a great place to camp and there are roles for everyone from minding camp and making food and cuppas to swinging in the trees.
Locals in solidarity with Santa, who was perched on the tree platform in the background, tied off to a log blocking the access road to the logging machines.
If you heard the words of the Secretary General of the United Nations that we urgently need to Stop the War on Nature, and want to do your bit… then the Bulga Plateau is the place to be in January 2023.
The logging of Bulga Forest is destroying the homes of Koalas and Greater Gliders that are already in danger of extinction. It is wrecking the upper catchment leading to downstream erosion, landslips, and muddying of the creeks and rivers. It removes the most effective carbon capture and storage technology we have- trees, in a time where we most need to draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Bulga Forest recovering after fire use
It is sheer madness for these trees to be falling in 2023. So come camping and help us keep the forest standing!
If you can’t come you can:
Follow and share our posts on @SaveBulgaForest on Facebook
Tweet using the hashtag #SaveBulgaForest #StandUp4Forests
Post clips/photos of yourself on other social media holding up signs with that message.
Your donation is greatly appreciated! Please use Direct Deposit to transfer funds to our bank account directly:
Account Name: Save Bulga Forest
Bank: Bank Australia
BSB: 313-140
Account No.: 12428634
Another Rights of Nature case win in Ecuador!
In April 2023, the Provincial Court of Imbabura ruled that a mining company, ENAMI/Codelco, must immediately cease its controversial Llurimagua copper project, which if ever constructed could destroy hundreds of hectares of cloud forests and waterways in the region of Intag.
The Court stated that the company's environmental impact statement, completed in 2014, was invalid due to violations of the rights of nature and the rights of affected communities to consultation.
This marks a major milestone in a legal battle spanning three years to stop the mine from going ahead.
Intag's local communities have been fighting one company after another since the 1980s.
Regional assembly against mining, Intag, 2019, funded by Rainforest Information Centre. Photo by Carlos Zorrilla
Over the past five years, the Rainforest Information Centre and its activist sister group, Melbourne Rainforest Action Group, have been helping out with funds for community assemblies and mobilisations, scientific expeditions, and legal costs around the Llurimagua battle.
Last year, one of these scientific expeditions discovered an entirely new species of frog in the area slated to be mined - named the "Resistance Rocket Frog" by local vote!
This is the second time in less than two years an Ecuadorian court has utilised the rights of nature to stop mining. In December 2021, Ecuador's Constitutional Court decided in favour of protection for the Los Cedros Reserve - a spectacular tropical cloud forest just west of Intag. This entire region sits within the world's number one biodiversity hotspot.
A young Resistance Rocket Frog. Photo by Carlos Zorrilla
More about our Projects and Campaigns
Ecuador Endangered
For five years, the Rainforest Information Centre and our Australian and international allies have been supporting rural and Indigenous communities to resist grand-scale mining in Ecuador. During that time we have raised almost $120,000 for frontlines to support direct conservation, legal cases and sustainable economic projects.
We are supporting several projects in Ecuador in 2023, including three major legal cases.
For the latest news and how to take action, visit our campaign page
Please donate here to help us keep this work going!
Philodendron bud, Los Cedros Reserve. Photo by Liz Downes
Forest Projects in India
India has lost over 40% of its remaining diverse forest cover in the last 100 years. In 2009, India ranked 10th worldwide in the amount of annual forest loss. Indian forest loss has been driven primarily by agriculture, commercial logging, and mining. Indigenous and subsistence communities who were traditionally dependent on forests for food and firewood are increasingly struggling to survive.
The Rainforest Information Centre has worked with local partners in India for over 3 decades to empower local communities through work in reforestation, nursery cultivation, food harvesting and preservation of tradition plant medicine knowledge.
For more information go to:
Projects in Kerala
Katkari Native Nursery, Maharashta
Saving Native Forests in Northern NSW
RIC is working with local environmental groups and communities in Northern NSW to continue to resist the deplorable logging of old-growth forests and some of the last remaining habitats for endangered species such as Koalas.
Open letter to the political leaders of Australia and NSW
DONATE HERE to help stop logging in these precious areas!
Our Partners and Friends
RIC is proud to be collaborating with and supporting like-minded organisations and projects in Australia and internationally.
These include ...
Marrow of the Mountain documentary
North East Forest Alliance (NEFA) NSW
Our History
The Rainforest Information Centre has been a central link in the radical environmental moment for nearly four decades. It was born out of the successful struggle to save the sub-tropical rainforests of New South Wales, Australia (now a World Heritage Area) in 1979-to 1981.
His initial experiences to save rainforests, beginning at Terania Creek, inspired John Seed to establish and lead the organisation in its participation in the struggles to save the temperate rainforests of Tasmania in 1982 (Franklin River Blockade) and the tropical rainforests of Far North Queensland in 1983-84 (Daintree Blockade).
Visit here for more about John, his far-reaching work, books, interviews, and upcoming events.
Visit our old website for decades of archives and stories about our work, and for Deep Ecology materials!
April 12, 2016