Carbon offset program

Warddeken rangers use rakes and leaf blowers as part of their fire management on the western Arnhem Land plateau in northern Australia. 

In 2006, traditional land owners founded the WALFA (West Arnhem Land Fire Abatement) project with the Northern Land Council, the Northern Territory government and multinational energy corporation ConocoPhillips. The Warddeken people are one of five Aboriginal communities in the Arnhem area that offset carbon through traditional savannah burning practices, the first program of its type.

Collectively, the land owners will earn $1 million a year for 17 years.

Carbon offset program

The Warddeken Indigenous Protected Area covers 1,394,951 hectares of spectacular stone and gorge country on the western Arnhem Land plateau, in northern Australia. The area adjoins Kakadu National Park.

In addition to carbon offsetting, Savannah burning protects Aboriginal sites and rock art from being lost or damaged in uncontrolled bushfires.

Carbon offset program

Warddeken rangers conduct a burning program on the Arnhem Land plateau.

Kakadu plum harvest

Gubinge, also known as Kakadu plum, is grown around Broome in Western Australia. The traditional bush tucker is high in antioxidants and has the most Vitamin C of any plant in the world. Kim Courtenay of Kimberley Training Institute has developed a technique called savannah enrichment, whereby gubinge trees are planted and harvested in a bush landscape.

Kakadu plum harvest

Djelk female ranger harvests billy goat plums (also known as kakadu plums) at the end of the wet season. The native fruit is extremely high in Vitamin C – now brandished a ‘superfood’, Aboriginal communities have been harvesting the kakadu plums for medicinal and nutritional value for millenia. These days, the harvest is also sold to pharmaceutical companies.

Kakadu plum harvest

Djelk ranger holds Kakadu plums harvested by the Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation in Maningrida.

Over the past decade, traditional owners around Broome have planted almost 2000 Kakadu plum trees with Kim Courtenay, a horticulturalist with the Kimberely Training Institute. As the Kakadu plum grows in demand, Kim and the KTI are hoping to make the harvest of the plant an Aboriginal industry.

Kakadu plum harvest

Women at Wadeye collect Kakadu plums, or mimarral as it is known in the region. The fruit is processed at Wadeye. Pictured: Althea Jabinee (centre) and Elizabeth Gumaduck (left) and Joanne Tchemjirr with the fruit.

Kakadu plum harvest

The fruit is processed at Wadeye in machines that reduce it to puree – here, Althea Jabinee holds frozen pureed fruit.

Native plant harvest

Rob Williams harvests native plants, such as kangaroo apples, for a NSW company extracting essential oils and active ingredients from native Australian flora.

Python conservation

The Oenpelli python (Morelia oenpelliensis) is one of Australia’s rarest snakes. Top End herpetologist Dr Gavin Bedford is working with traditional owners of the East Alligator River region to conserve the species, as he and Aboriginal communites were alarmed that it might follow a series of extinctions across northern Australia.

Gavin, assisted by the Territory government, created a breeding program where traditional owners are awarded for evey snake collected and another royalty for any hatchlings it produces. 

Fish River, Northern Territory

Fish River is a former pastoral station that was purchased by the Indigenous Land Corporation in the Northern Territory. Fires early in the year are part of a Carbon Farming Initiative in which the local Indigenous community can sell carbon offsets to companies.

Fish River, Northern Territory

Fish River Ranger Desmond Daly sets fire to the country, which is burned early in the dry season to prevent “hot” wildfires later in the year.

Fish River, Northern Territory

Fish River indigenous rangers (from left to right: Rodney Maranya, Wally Johnston and Desmond Daly) conduct a burn from quad bikes. 

Sea cucumber harvest

Will Bowman of Tasmanian Seafoods holds some of the brood stock for breeding sea cucumbers, or trepang, that will eventually be released into the wild and ranched as food for Asian markets. Tasmanian Seafoods and Aboriginal people from Groote Eylandt and other communities along the Arnhem Land coast aim to release juvenile sea cucumbers to breed with wild stocks to create an enhanced harvest base.

The sea cucumber program awaits approval from the Northern Territory government.