USA Fellowship to help understand rainforest stories

A James Cook University researcher is off to the USA after securing a prestigious Queensland-Smithsonian Fellowship to examine rare manuscripts written by rainforest travellers up to 125 years ago.

Dr Elizabeth Smyth is a writer and researcher at JCU’s Roderick Centre for Australian Literature and Creative Writing in Cairns. She says that protecting tropical rainforest can be viewed as a cultural rather than a scientific problem.

“The influence of stories on people’s understanding and perspectives of rainforest is important to policy development and management.

“This project involves comparative analysis of how rainforest is represented in writing by naturalists who travelled through tropical rainforests in 19th century Queensland and in the early 20th century Republic of the Congo,” said Dr Smyth.

She said one aim of the project is to spark academic and public discussion about biodiversity loss and endangered habitats.

“The renowned scientist Alexander von Humboldt said an understanding of nature requires a sentient experience. For some, this is gained through immersion in nature, but for many it comes from reading,” said Dr Smyth.

“In the journals and diaries of naturalists, I’m not so much interested in the lists of species or maps of the terrain, as their experiences. What pleased them? What unsettled them? What kinds of things did they notice? And what perhaps did they overlook?

“Working with the Smithsonian in Washington DC will provide access to journals, dedicated research time, and an opportunity to engage with expertise, information and archives that are unavailable in Australia.”

She said living in Cairns, a stone’s throw from the Wet Tropics of Queensland World Heritage Area, provides her with an advantage.

“This means I can cross-check texts written here with the actual rainforest they describe and share findings with botanists in the Tropical Indigenous Ethnobotany Centre and elsewhere in the Australian Tropical Herbarium.”

Dr Smyth will travel to the USA in early 2026.