Glen Russell Station

Glen Russell Station is a savanna fire management project located in the rural locality of Glen Russell, approximately 33km west of Mareeba and 95km inland from Cairns in Far North Queensland. It was registered in July 2015 and covers an area of 27,558.09 hectares.

Savanna fire management projects involve the strategic and planned burning of savanna areas during the early dry season. By safely reducing fuel loads, this practice mitigates the risk and severity of intense late dry season wildfires, thereby avoiding significant greenhouse gas emissions.

The Glen Russell area is situated on the western edge of the Atherton Tablelands region, where the primary land use is cattle grazing on native vegetation. The environmental conditions feature a transition from the high rainfall tropical zones in the east to semi-arid dry savanna in the west. The soils in this transition zone range from rich volcanic basalts to rugged metamorphic sedimentary rocks and leached lithosols.

This project was set up to reduce fire emissions across both the high and low rainfall zones of the property. Interestingly, the property forms part of the historic Hodgkinson gold fields and remains a known site for local gold prospectors and fossickers. The project has also undergone several administrative changes; a variation in May 2021 removed certain areas from the project boundaries, and in May 2022, the proponent was changed from Country Carbon Pty Ltd to Terra Carbon Pty Limited following a 2020 Enforceable Undertaking accepted by the Clean Energy Regulator.