ON FARM NATIONAL CARBON REDUCTION Firing up to reduce carbon emissions Top End beef producers are traditional Indigenous burning practicesIn contrast, fires earlier in the year are using a centuries-old land for social and environmental outcomes cooler, are usually contained to patches management practice to including training and employment. of dry grass between wetter ground reduce carbon emissions Income from fire abatement and often self-extinguish overnight and turn a profit, which is being contributes to: under dewy conditions. invested back into station and • costs of burning activities These small, early dry season fires community development. • land management costs such release fewer emissions than would as management of Fish River, a otherwise be generated each year by For the past six years, the Indigenous 178,000ha conservation reserve late-season wildfires. The reduction in Land Corporation (ILC) has used early late-season wildfire also allows carbon dry season savanna burning to reduce • caring-for-country activities with traditional owners of Merepah Station. sequestered in live and dead woody the risk of devastating wildfires while biomass to remain as a carbon sink. generating carbon credits. The ILC is sharing the knowledge and Project requirements The ILC Group employs staff in a range experience generated from the savanna of ILC-developed agribusinesses, burning projects with other Indigenous Viable savanna burning projects need many of which are major players in the enterprises, some of which have also to be conducted on land that has a northern beef industry. Approximately registered projects. history of intense, late-season wildfires, 70,000 head of cattle are managed known as a ‘high emissions baseline’. How it works across 11 pastoral holdings, either Australia has more than 1.5 million km2 The difference between the baseline owned by the ILC or leased from of continuous savanna, which consists emissions and the reduced emissions Indigenous landowners. of annual and perennial grasses and from the early burning program and predominantly eucalypt trees. additional carbon retained in woody In 2012, ILC’s NT property, ‘Fish biomass determines how many River’, became the site of the first The wet season triggers a flush of new Australian carbon credit units are controlled, early dry season savanna grass growth which becomes a huge generated each year. burning project to be approved under fuel load in the dry. Out-of-control the Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI) to wildfires can devastate the landscape, While the ILC projects generate produce Australian carbon credit units. destroying livestock, Indigenous culturalcarbon credit units from emissions The first three years of the project sites, biodiversity and infrastructure. abatement only via the 2015 savanna method, the new 2018 methodology produced more than 40,000 carbon Traditionally, Indigenous people burnt allocates credits for carbon stored credit units which were sold to Caltex a patchwork of areas for ease of in the vegetation (sequestration) by Australia for more than $800,000. movement, encouraging bush food preventing trees from being burnt in A second savanna burning project was collection and cultural practices, whichwildfires, in addition to abatement. established on ILC’s 186,000ha Cape reduced the occurrence of large fires in the early dry season. All new savanna burning method York cattle property, ‘Merepah Station’, projects can be registered either as in 2013. In the first two years of burning,Controlled savanna burns mimic those the project generated 32,826 carbon traditional practices, and act as a risk credit units, sold under the Carbon management strategy to protect assets LESSONS Pricing Mechanism. and biodiversity, and reduce the risk LEARNED In 2015, the ILC secured a five-year of erosion which can occur with wet credit sales contract at a set price season downpours and cyclones. > Early dry season savanna burning through the Emissions Reduction In poorly managed country, fires tend projects need to be conducted Fund, which replaced the Carbon to occur during the hot, dry weather on land that has a history of Pricing Mechanism. Around 18,000 from August to December, when fuel intense, late-season wildfires. Australian carbon credit units a year loads have dried out completely and > Land managers have to stay on are generated from each project. humidity is low. top of changes to the carbon accounting process. ILC Group CEO John Maher said the The fires burn hot and fast, consume > Communication with neighbours savanna burning projects are not only trees and the grassy understorey, can is important to coordinate an opportunity to generate revenue engulf large areas and are big emitters burning activities. for marginal Indigenous-held land, of the potent greenhouse gases but provided a way to reinvigorate methane and nitrous oxide. 18