Savanna Burning Investment Ready Project - Cape York Pilot Aurukun

Savanna Burning Investment Ready Project - Cape York Pilot Aurukun is a savanna fire management project located near Aurukun, approximately 630km northwest of Cairns on the Western Cape York Peninsula in Queensland. It was registered in January 2015 and covers an extensive 379,397.48 hectares.

Savanna fire management projects involve the strategic and planned "cool" burning of savanna areas during the early dry season. This early intervention reduces fuel loads and prevents intensely destructive and hotter late dry season wildfires, thereby reducing overall greenhouse gas emissions.

The Western Cape York region features vast tracts of traditional Indigenous homelands, interspersed with conservation areas and some cattle grazing. The area experiences a tropical savanna climate, categorized as a high rainfall zone due to its pronounced monsoonal wet season. Soils across the region are generally lateritic, bauxite-rich, and composed of sandy loams.

Operated by the Indigenous-owned, not-for-profit Aak Puul Ngantam (APN Cape York), the project engages local Wik and Kugu Traditional Owners as rangers to conduct the burning activities. This effectively combines traditional ecological knowledge, such as how to read country and knowing when to burn, with modern technology like helicopters and incendiary drops. The project successfully completed a fixed delivery contract (CAC102439) of 60,000 ACCUs with the Commonwealth in May 2020. The income generated from this carbon farming initiative allows Traditional Owners to spend more time on their ancestral homelands passing on cultural knowledge, while also funding essential infrastructure like communication towers for the remote community.