One of the privileged few to travel on the memorable three day southern Cape York tour, after the Institute of Foresters’ of Australia 2017 Cairns conference, I’m sharing a snapshot through the link to a 3 min video
We saw areas of country that are not accessible to the public because our hosts Daryl Killin and partner Lou Vanrikxoort have a trusted association with the Hope Vale aboriginal community, whom they work with, north east of Cooktown.
Daryl is a forest expert working with the aboriginal community to reinstate management of the land as their ancestors had for tens of thousands of years. The technique is cool burning of savannah lands to preserve and indeed encourage biodiversity. Cool burning burns the undergrowth not the canopy and protects against ruinous wild fire in the dry season.
Wild fire there, as everywhere, creates carnage for plants, animals, humans and waterways. These dramatically impact the ecosystem. The sheer magnitude, frequency and breadth of storm activity in that northern Australia Cape York climate ignites wildfire on a similar scale. You will have put two and two together that this is very much a carbon story – wild fires every year release into the atmosphere millions of tonnes of CO2 emissions. The savannah burns are a technique to reduce carbon emissions.
Innovation is in Daryl and Lou’s DNA – their firm Native Conifers Carbon Sink Pty Ltd, was the first carbon sink registered in Australia in 2012, under the Emissions Reduction Fund’s Permanent Environmental Plantings method
Kurrumbene Projects 