Firestick Fund: Kimberley Carbon Cattle Conservation Culture Project (Revoked)

Firestick Fund: Kimberley Carbon Cattle Conservation Culture Project (Revoked) is a Savanna Fire Management project located in the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia, approximately 200km northeast of Fitzroy Crossing. Registered in May 2016, the project originally covered an immense 501,530.95 hectares. The surrounding Kimberley area is predominantly used for expansive cattle grazing on pastoral leases and Indigenous conservation land. The project area falls into the savanna low rainfall zone classification, which typically receives between 600mm and 1,000mm of annual rainfall, and the local environment is generally characterised by sandy loams, red earths, and rocky skeletal soils.

Savanna fire management projects involve the strategic, planned burning of savanna areas primarily during the early dry season. This practice deliberately reduces available fuel loads such as grass and leaf litter, which in turn lowers the frequency, severity, and greenhouse gas emissions of unmanaged, late dry season wildfires. Standard requirements for the 2015 methodology include compiling a detailed vegetation fuel type map, maintaining annual planned burning schedules across the project area, and providing a declaration that livestock densities have not increased as a consequence of the project activities.

This project was established by the proponent, Firestick Fund Pty Ltd, which was formed as a 50% Aboriginal-owned joint venture with Australian Integrated Carbon (AI Carbon). The explicit aim of the project was to act as a seed project for an innovative social enterprise model balancing "culture, carbon, cattle, and conservation" across several hundred thousand hectares of Aboriginal-owned pastoral leases. The project was specifically designed to provide on-ground work and wages for Aboriginal ranger and pastoral teams while simultaneously protecting pastoral grazing assets from fire damage. Despite its ambitious scope, the project saw some areas removed in a March 2017 variation and was officially revoked under section 30 of the Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI) Rule on June 5, 2018. The proponent company, Firestick Fund Pty Ltd, was subsequently deregistered voluntarily in 2020.