Springvale Station (Revoked)

Springvale Station (Revoked) is a savanna burning project located approximately 50 kilometers southwest of Cooktown in the Cape York Peninsula region of Queensland. Registered in January 2015, the project covered a massive area of over 54,500 hectares. The site sits within the Normanby River catchment, a critical environmental zone that drains directly into the Great Barrier Reef lagoon.

The project operated under the Savanna Burning methodology, which incentivizes land managers to conduct cool, controlled burns early in the dry season. This practice reduces the fuel load, preventing high-intensity, uncontrollable wildfires late in the season that generate significantly higher greenhouse gas emissions. For a project in this region, the climate is distinctly tropical and monsoonal, classified as a high-rainfall zone receiving between 1000mm and 1500mm annually.

The landscape is defined by a mix of fertile red and black basalt soils, as well as highly erodible alluvial and sodic soils. Historically used for cattle grazing, the station became infamous as a "sediment hotspot," contributing disproportionate amounts of soil runoff into the reef system due to severe gully erosion exacerbated by grazing.

A key note for this project is the reason for its revocation in August 2016. In May 2016, the Queensland Government purchased Springvale Station for approximately $7 million to convert it into a Nature Refuge. The primary goal was to destock the property and remediate the massive erosion gullies to protect the Great Barrier Reef. Consequently, the commercial carbon project was revoked shortly after the change in land tenure, as the state took over management for conservation purposes.