Western Top End Fire Management Project Area B (Revoked)

Western Top End Fire Management Project Area B (Revoked) is a savanna fire management project located in the Victoria-Daly local government area, approximately 110km west of Katherine in the Northern Territory. It was registered in September 2015 and covers 458,048.56 hectares.

Savanna burning projects involve the strategic, planned burning of savanna areas during the early dry season. These cooler, mosaic-pattern burns are implemented to reduce fuel loads and mitigate the risk of larger, more intense, and highly destructive late dry season wildfires. By shifting the fire regime to the early dry season, the methodology limits the combustion of biomass, thereby reducing the emission of significant greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide. Standard requirements for this methodology dictate that proponents must track and map fire scars using satellite imagery, maintain robust fire management plans, and strictly conduct burns prior to the designated late dry season cut-off date.

The region west of Katherine is characterized by a monsoonal tropical savanna climate, which experiences a pronounced dry season and a high-rainfall wet season. The soils across this Top End landscape are predominantly infertile lateritic soils, red earths, and sandy loams. Regional land use is heavily dominated by large-scale pastoralism (beef cattle grazing), interspersed with extensive areas of Indigenous freehold land and conservation reserves.

An interesting facet of this project is its short administrative history. In November 2016, the project proponent, James Benjamin Lewis, was awarded a Fixed Delivery Carbon Abatement Contract (CAC141634) with the Commonwealth to supply 190,000 tonnes of abatement. However, the project was officially revoked under Section 30 of the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Rule on April 11, 2018. Consequently, the contract lapsed and was terminated in May 2018 with zero ACCUs sold or delivered to the Commonwealth. Additionally, the project was specifically referenced in an April 2017 Parliament of Australia submission by the Law Council of Australia, which used the project as a case example when discussing the complexities of native title rights, third-party consents, and area-based carbon offset projects under the Emissions Reduction Fund.