Banbansprings_FPA1

Banbansprings_FPA1 is a Savanna Fire Management project located at Ban Ban Springs Station, approximately 140km south of Darwin near the town of Adelaide River in the Northern Territory. It was registered in February 2013 and covers a substantial 256,192.10 hectares.

Savanna Fire Management projects involve conducting strategic, planned burning of savanna areas during the early dry season. By initiating cooler, patchier burns, land managers can reduce the heavy vegetation fuel loads, which mitigates the risk, size, and severity of destructive late dry season wildfires. This methodology works to actively remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by sequestering carbon in dead organic matter, while also avoiding the massive emissions of methane and nitrous oxide that are normally generated by uncontrolled late-season blazes.

The Burrundie and Victoria Daly regions of the Northern Territory are predominantly used for large-scale pastoral cattle grazing. The project is situated in a high rainfall zone, with the property receiving a mean annual rainfall of approximately 1,340mm. This climate supports dense tropical savanna ecosystems, aquatic lagoons, and fringing woodlands which typically grow on the region's lateritic red earth, kandosol, and tenosol soil profiles.

An interesting note about this project is that the underlying 187,300-hectare cattle property, Ban Ban Springs, was purchased by the carbon aggregator Corporate Carbon Group in late 2022 for nearly $28.9 million. The buyer intends to run an integrated regenerative cattle and carbon farming operation, keeping the existing cattle operations in place to complement the savanna fire management. The project's participant, Umlilo Holdings Pty Ltd, acts as a trustee for the CC Stage 3 Agricultural Trust, an entity specifically established with legal advisement to acquire pastoral leases for these types of combined agricultural and carbon initiatives. Over its lifespan, the project underwent a methodology variation in 2016, accrued over 58,000 Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) leading up to 2022, and successfully completed its primary carbon abatement contract (CAC102596) in August 2023.