The project

The Wilinggin Fire Project uses a combination of Indigenous traditional knowledge and modern scientific practices to conduct landscape-scale early dry season burning which reduces greenhouse gas emissions from all fire are reduced while creating significant other community and environmental benefits.

The project is registered under the Emissions Reduction Fund using the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative – Emissions Abatement through Savanna Fire Management) Methodology Determination 2015.

The project covers an area of over 1 million hectares of exclusive possession Native Title land across both the Shire of Derby West Kimberley and Shire of Wyndham East Kimberley.

Traditional Owners are trained and employed as fire specialists and rangers, enabling them to look after Country and culture through right-way fire, by strategically lighting cooler, patchy early dry season burns aimed at:

• Creating a mosaic of different fuel ages.

• Establishing landscape-scale firebreaks through a combination of burn lines and the use of topographic features (e.g., large rivers, escarpments) and roads / tracks.

• Limiting hot, large-scale destructive late dry season wildfires, protecting communities, infrastructure, cultural sites, priority species and habitats, including long-unburnt vegetation and sandstone heath.

Monitoring and evaluation approaches are continuously improved in order to ensure optimum outcomes and respond to changing conditions, with particular focus on assessing environmental impacts and ensuring maximum benefits for biodiversity and conservation from the fire program.

The Property

The Wilinggin Fire Project is formally owned by the Wanjina‐ Wunggurr (Native Title) Aboriginal Corporation RNTBC (WW PBC), which is the registered native title body corporate that holds on trust Native Title over Wilinggin Country, along with neighbouring Wunambal Gaambera and Dambimangari Native Title.

As the Wanjina cultural block, the groups work together to look after and manage Country through their savanna burning carbon projects, driving knowledge sharing, and achieving critical scale.

Ngarinyin people have developed a long-term Healthy Country Plan that sets out the cultural and environmental targets which Ngarinyin people are seeking to achieve. The Wilinggin Fire Project reflects and contributes to achieving the objectives set out in the Plan.

The Project is made up of two distinct project areas:

• Area 1 falls entirely within the 1,000mm rainfall band and formed the original Wilinggin Fire Project registered in 2014; and

• Area 2 includes Unallocated Crown Land Parcels falling within the 600mm to 1,000mm rainfall band, which were added to the Wilinggin Fire Project on 9 October 2017.

Co-benefits & non-carbon benefits

• Protects vulnerable habitats, cultural sites and community infrastructure from destructive wildfires and mitigates the impact of weeds and feral animals on threatened species such as critical-weight range mammals, wrens and finches. The North Kimberley is now the only area of mainland Australia where no mammal extinctions have been recorded since European settlement.

• Provides a sustainable means of looking after natural and cultural values of Country, while achieving real progress towards economic independence, reversing socio-economic disadvantage and improving livelihoods.

• Enables Ngarinyin people to get back on Country and pass on traditional knowledge, protect and improve biodiversity, and make sure fire operations can continue into the future.

• Enables support for other groups representing Traditional Owners in particular parts of the Wilinggin determination area, such as Nyaliga Aboriginal Corporation, Ngallagunda Aboriginal Corporation and Kupungarri Aboriginal Corporation.