A Cape York Peninsula farming family is hoping to prove cattle and carbon can co-exist, selling their station to a leading carbon developer.
While communities in western Queensland have highlighted challenges with locking up large parcels of land for carbon credits, the approach in the state's far north is different.
Australian government figures show agriculture produces 16 per cent of the country's greenhouse gas emissions, which is set to rise to more than 20 per cent by 2035.
In an effort to counter this, Australia's red meat industry is aiming to be carbon neutral by 2030, relying partially on carbon projects such as savanna burning to achieve its goal.
Savanna burning involves cool burns in the early dry season to reduce the amount of captured carbon released by large, hot fires later in the season, Cape York fire coordinator Andrew Drenen said.
"It's managing the fire regimes to reduce carbon emissions, so keeping the fires small and generally trying to implement a patchwork type of burning rotation," he said.
It is a project unique to northern Australia due to the region's monsoonal summer rainfall, and it is gaining in popularity.
"There will be millions of tonnes of carbon emissions abated through savanna fire burning, and it's gaining momentum," Mr Drenen said.
Paniri Agricultural Co, an arm of Corporate Carbon Group, now owns 522,000 hectares of land after it purchased three cattle stations south-west of Coen in the Holroyd aggregation, in addition to Watson River station purchased in September.
Watson River station was previously owned by the Quartermaine family.
"My oldies owned it and built it up from nothing to what it is today and the sale of Watson was a little bit sad, but in the same breath, one door closes, another door opens," Luke Quartermaine said.
Luke and Ally Quartermaine have been appointed regional managers across the company's northern Queensland operations.
"It's pretty exciting stuff to try and be leading the way and be ahead of the game," Mr Quartermaine said.
Savanna burning is an emissions reduction project, different to carbon storage which involves tree planting.
Carbon credits are generated when emissions are below the predicted baseline, or average emissions.
Ms Quartermaine said the couple had run a successful beef enterprise with a carbon project on Watson River before the sale, proving cattle and carbon could co-exist.
"I wouldn't say don't mix because we're sort of living proof that you could do both," she said.
"We're meshing them together and really merging something amazing and I truly believe it's going to be very, very successful."
Approach to harness 'untapped potential'
Mr Quartermaine said Cape York suffered stigma due to its location and he wanted to turn that around.
"There's not too many places in the world or in Australia you can say that you get a guaranteed wet season," he said.
"I've seen a few dry times, but I've never in my life seen a drought."
He said in the 38 years the family had owned the Watson River property, it had retained its base herd, never needing to destock in times of drought.
"In my eyes that speaks volumes," he said.
The Paniri Agricultural co-chairperson and managing director of corporate carbon, Gary Wyatt, said the company aimed to contribute positively to challenges with the environmental footprint in the cattle industry.
"It's an important challenge and we don't have all the answers, but believe the co-benefits of the dual activities could help secure the future of agriculture," he said.
Mr Quartermaine believes there may be a "balancing act" at times, but he is excited to be part of the plans with Paniri.
"At times we're probably not going to see eye to eye," he said.
"But most of the time we should be able to work in together."
Paniri said it would also undertake native regeneration, native plantings, and beef herd management projects to reduce the emissions from cattle-raising.
Others addressing carbon
Meanwhile, another major Australian pastoral company has reached a milestone to reduce carbon emissions after it received its carbon and methane emissions baseline data.
Consolidated Pastoral Company chief executive Troy Setter said the agribusiness would apply the data to its holdings in Australia and Indonesia so it could work towards carbon neutrality.
"We've been in the carbon reduction space since about 2014 because it's a really good thing to do and also, there's some good value creation opportunities for us," he said.
"[After receiving the data] the heavy lifting gets going on what are the ways to further reduce our emissions."
Mr Setter said the way the baseline was calculated had changed multiple times since 2014, which contributed to uncertainty in the cattle industry.
"The beef cattle herd methodology, we'd like to see that have an in-perpetuity type approach to it so that producers can invest in infrastructure [and] technology," he said.
"So that we can on an ongoing basis continue to reduce emissions and to be rewarded for holding them down."
