Northern Savanna Project

The Northern Savanna Project is a Savanna Fire Management project located on the traditional lands of the Alka Bawar people, centred around the former Kalpowar Station on the Cape York Peninsula in Queensland. The project area sits within the Rinyirru (Lakefield) National Park aggregation, approximately 140km west of Cooktown and 340km northwest of Cairns. Registered in November 2016, the project covers a vast area of approximately 192,516 hectares.

The region is defined by its tropical savanna landscape, featuring extensive river floodplains, wetlands, and open woodlands. As a project in the high rainfall zone (receiving approximately 1,000mm annually), the environment supports dense vegetation growth during the wet season, which cures into heavy fuel loads during the dry season. The soils in this area are diverse, consisting primarily of alluvial cracking clays on the floodplains and sandy loams or earths on the ridges and levees. Land use in the region has shifted from historical cattle grazing to conservation and Indigenous land management, with the Alka Bawar (Kalpowar) Aboriginal Corporation holding the land as Aboriginal freehold.

The project operates under the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative-Emissions Abatement through Savanna Fire Management) Methodology Determination 2015. This methodology involves strategic "cool burning" early in the dry season (typically before August) to create fire breaks and reduce fuel loads. These planned burns limit the spread and intensity of uncontrolled "hot burns" that occur late in the dry season, thereby avoiding the release of significant greenhouse gas emissions.

Notable aspects of the project include its commercial history and management evolution. While the project originally secured a massive contract (CAC903889) to deliver 5 million Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) to the Commonwealth, this contract lapsed with zero units delivered, and the project has since pivoted to the private market. In 2025, the project underwent a significant management variation, removing Kurrajong Partners Pty Ltd and appointing Gondwana Carbon as the exclusive agent to manage development and credit sales.