A $7.5 million project will help sugar cane growers in the Wet Tropics continue to fine-tune farming practices – increasing productivity and improving the quality of water flowing to the Great Barrier Reef.

Terrain NRM has secured funding through the Australian Government’s Reefwise Farming Program for a two-and-a-half-year project focusing on fertiliser application and managing crop diseases and pests.

The project will help cane growers across more than 6700 hectares from Cairns to Ingham, and will support on-farm activities that hone in on pesticide and dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) entering our waterways, as well as particulate nitrogen and phosphorous.

Partnering with Canegrowers and Sugar Research Australia

Terrain NRM is working with Canegrowers Cairns, Canegrowers Innisfail, Sugar Research Australia and Canegrowers Herbert River on the project, which will include dollar-for-dollar grants for cane farmers adopting new practices, nutrient management plans, farm trial sites and field days.

The Herbert, Tully, Johnstone and Russell-Mulgrave catchments rank among the highest priorities in the entire Great Barrier Reef catchment for reducing dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) and pesticide loads to the Great Barrier Reef lagoon.

Terrain NRM’s Jamie Thornberry said on-farm practice change and innovation was continuing to play a pivotal role in the delivery of water quality outcomes for the region.

“As a region with high rainfall and a close proximity to the reef, intensive agricultural systems will continue to be presented with unique challenges,” he said.

“Farmers have come a long way in accepting these challenges as a part of doing business in the region and continuing to manage nutrient runoff, sediment and pesticides to achieve water quality outcomes.”

Scaling up proven changes to farming practices

He said the new project would scale up changes to farming practices that had proven to be effective over a number of years, with actions tailored to each part of the region.

“Projects will be targeting the specific needs of each region, with dollar-for-dollar grants in the Ingham and Cairns areas to support things like changing fertiliser application methods, laser-levelling, precision application of mill mud and ash, and optimising liming practices.

Extension help with new or updated nutrient management plans

“Extension officers will be working with growers in the Tully and Innisfail regions on new or updated nutrient management plans, and on everything from identifying and managing crop constraints to ameliorant and cane variety selection. They will also be working with growers in the Cairns and Ingham regions.

Banana, grazing and cane land will be improved in the Cassowary Coast region through a new $2 million project.

Terrain NRM will be working with landholders from Innisfail to Kennedy on initiatives to increase the resilience of their land through a ‘Future Farms’ project funded by the Queensland Government.

Help after extreme weather events

“Local landholders have been subject to extreme weather events in recent years, and this program will fund on-ground initiatives to improve farm resilience and soil and land conditions,” Minister for Natural Resources, Mines, Manufacturing and Regional and Rural Development Dale Last said.

Terrain NRM is working with the Australian Banana Growers Council, Canegrowers Innisfail, the Cassowary Coast Graziers Association and landholders on the program, which is built around directly improving soil health, soil condition, land condition and waterway health.

Demonstration sites on farms

As part of the project, several landholders will host demonstration sites on cane, banana and grazing land. On cane land, these sites will focus on mixed species fallow crops, improved drainage, laser levelling and soil amelioration.

In grazing country, the focus will be on pasture management including legume planting, strategic paddock layout and erosion control along waterways using revegetation and fencing.

On banana-growing land, demonstration sites will showcase contouring to help mitigate erosion on slopes and farm drainage design and streambank remediation to reduce sediment loss.

Terrain NRM’s CEO Stewart Christie said the Cassowary Coast region had experienced repeated severe weather events over the past two decades including Cyclones Larry (2006), Yasi (2011), Niran (2021) and Jasper (2023), and major flooding from tropical lows in 2025.

“These events, following decades of land-use pressures, have extensively damaged the region’s agricultural landscapes, resulting in financial losses and long-term degradation of land and waterways,’’ he said.

One of Australia’s most threatened ecosystems is being restored through targeted conservation works at Kurrimine Beach National Park, safeguarding the largest remaining area of littoral rainforest in the Wet Tropics.

Often described as “where the rainforest meets the reef”, littoral rainforest grows close to the sea—typically within two kilometres of the coast—on diverse substrates such as headlands, sand and coral rubble. This rare ecological community is scattered along Australia’s east coast from far north Queensland to eastern Victoria and is listed as Critically Endangered under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act.

The Forest Resilience project is funded through the Australian Government’s Saving Native Species Program. The project applies a whole-of-ecosystem approach to improve the condition the Eastern Forests of Far North Queensland priority place identified in the Australian Government’s Threatened Species Action Plan 2022-2032.

Project Coordinator Tony O’Malley said Terrain NRM is partnering with the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service (QPWS), Traditional Owners and other land managers to protect and restore this significant ecosystem at Kurrimine Beach.

“Since it grows along the coast, littoral rainforest faces significant development pressure, compounded by climate change, rising sea levels, storm surges and receding shorelines,” Mr O’Malley said.

“It’s important that we work together to protect what remains and plan for future growth so the forest can thrive.”

QPWS Resource Ranger Chris Roach said the littoral rainforest at Kurrimine Beach National Park is a high conservation priority.

“This is the largest remaining area of this threatened ecosystem in the Wet Tropics, making its protection critically important,” he said.

“Terrain NRM’s Forest Resilience project has brought land managers and Traditional Owners together to reduce the impacts of weeds and feral pigs, while supporting actions under the National Littoral Rainforest Recovery Plan.”

Nature-based solutions work with natural systems to address environmental challenges that help protect communities, homes and local economies from increasing fire and floods risks. 

After severe flooding in 2019, Terrain NRM restored two erosion hotspots in the Mossman catchment—Bamboo Creek and the Mossman River—using nature-based solutions (NbS).

Five years on, these sites show how working with natural systems—not against them—can stabilise riverbanks, support vegetation, and improve resilience to future floods.

The two sites, one at Bamboo Creek (BC-1) and one on the Mossman River (MR-2), were restored using a combination of nature-based engineering techniques and revegetation. Thanks to funding from the Minderoo Foundation, we’ve been able to revisit these sites to see how they fared after major weather events, including during Tropical Cyclone Jasper (2023), and to understand how nature-based solutions perform under real-world conditions in the Wet Tropics.

Lessons learnt

1. Smart design starts with the right location
Nature-based solutions succeed when they match the natural behaviour of the river. At the Bamboo Creek site, revegetation has thrived because it was placed above the active channel, where it is only occasionally inundated. This reduced exposure to strong flows and erosion, allowing vegetation to establish and strengthen the bank.

2. Nature-based solutions can significantly reduce erosion
At the Mossman River site, timber pile fields reduced erosive forces dramatically – by up to 75–90% in smaller flows and by around 50–75% in larger flows. During Tropical Cyclone Jasper, the site experienced far less damage than was expected. Well-designed NbS can therefore meaningfully reduce the physical forces that drive erosion, and can protect both land and infrastructure.

3. After big change, smaller floods can cause bigger damage
One key finding from the report is that changes in site hydrology require adaptive design. Although the Mossman River site emerged from Tropical Cyclone Jasper with minimal impact, smaller flood events in 2026 caused significantly greater erosion and vegetation loss. The cumulative effects of the cyclone over the following three years fundamentally altered the Mossman River system, creating conditions that the original, site-specific nature-based design was not equipped to withstand.

4. Rivers change – designs must adapt too
Sediment deposited after Tropical Cyclone Jasper raised the riverbed at the Mossman River site by over one metre. This reduced channel capacity and increased flooding risk. This meant smaller floods began behaving more like larger events so NbS require adaptive management, rather than a “set and forget” approach to continue to protect the sites from the impacts of flooding.

5. Maintenance and monitoring are essential
Long-term success of NbS depends on ongoing maintenance including weed control, watering and infill planting, so investment is required beyond the initial installation.

WHAT IS IT?

The African Tulip Tree (Spathodea campanulata) is a fast-growing ornamental tree native to tropical Africa.

Easily recognised for its striking orange-red flowers, it was introduced to Australia as a garden plant but has become invasive in the Wet Tropics.

WHY IS IT A PROBLEM?

African tulip tree poses a significant threat to native ecosystems. It invades riparian zones, farmland, urban gardens and disturbed areas, outcompeting other vegetation and forming dense thickets.

Its dense canopy blocks sunlight, preventing the growth of understory plants and its flowers are toxic to native bees.

The tree produces large quantities of wind dispersed seeds, enabling rapid and long range spread. The tree suckers readily when disturbed or stressed, making it challenging to control.

CHARACTERISTICS 

It is an evergreen tree that grows to over 20 metres.

It has broad oval-shaped leaves with distinctive veins. The leaves are bronze-coloured when young, turning glossy green as they mature.

Flowers are a large orange to red with frilled yellow margins on the petals. The papery seeds are wind dispersed and form in elongated pods, up to 20cm long, which split lengthwise as they dry

HOW TO SPOT IT ON YOUR PROPERTY

Look for a tall tree with a wide canopy, glossy green leaves, and clusters of vibrant orange-red flowers. The presence of seedlings in nearby areas may indicate an infestation or mature tree nearby.

WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT 

• Prevention: Avoid planting African tulip and control/replace garden specimens with suitable non-invasive alternatives.
• Physical removal: Hand-pull freshly germinated seedlings.
• Chemical control: For established seedlings, saplings and mature trees, cut down and treat stumps with herbicide to prevent regrowth. Treat upper cut sections as well to prevent roots forming where it contacts the ground. No herbicide is currently registered for control of African tulip in Queensland. However, an off-label use permit (Permit No. PER11463 https://permits.apvma.gov.au/per11463.pdf ) allows use of various herbicides for control of environmental weeds in non-agricultural areas, bushland, forests, wetlands, and coastal and adjacent areas. Follow up control may be required.

Around the world, new environmental markets are emerging in response to an urgent challenge: how to rapidly accelerate investment into nature at the scale required to address climate change and biodiversity loss.

These markets take many forms—carbon, biodiversity, water and plastics—but share a common purpose. They provide credible frameworks to quantify and verify measurable environmental improvements, which can then be purchased, connecting private capital with on ground outcomes.

For investors, they represent an opportunity to support nature positive outcomes while responding to growing regulatory, reputational and market expectations.

Why are they being developed?

Most people are familiar with the climate crisis. Less widely recognised—but equally important—is the biodiversity crisis: the accelerating loss of plant and animal species and the degradation of ecosystems globally.

This is not just an environmental issue. Biodiversity loss threatens food security, human health, social stability and economic prosperity. More than 50 per cent of global GDP is considered moderately or highly dependent on nature.

These twin crises are interconnected and driven by human impacts on the natural world. Addressing them together is both possible and essential—but it requires coordinated action from governments, businesses, communities and landholders, supported by substantial investment.

Shifts in policy and significant increases in public environment funding are required to meet the scale and urgency of the challenge. However, financial input from the private and philanthropic sectors is also necessary to help bridge the significant funding gap. Environmental markets have emerged as one mechanism to help close this funding gap, by providing the framework to mobilise private capital into conservation, restoration and improved land management.

The global policy context

Momentum for nature positive investment has been strengthened by recent global policy developments.

At the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in 2022, 195 countries and the European Union adopted the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. A central commitment of the agreement is the protection of 30 per cent of the world’s land and water by 2030—the “30 by 30” target.

Delivering on these ambitious goals will require new financial mechanisms.

Environmental markets, including emerging biodiversity credit markets, provide a mechanism to channel private investment into nature protection and restoration at scale.

What’s happening in Australia?

Following the adoption of the Global Biodiversity Framework, Australia has moved to develop enabling policy settings and market infrastructure.

In 2024, the Australian Government released its Nature Positive Plan and announced the establishment of a national Nature Repair Market. The market is designed to enable private investment in projects that deliver verified, measurable improvements in biodiversity outcomes, creating new opportunities for investors to engage in nature positive action.

Alongside this national initiative, a range of state based and privately operated environmental markets continue to operate.

In Queensland, for example, the Reef Credit Scheme supports improvements in water quality flowing to the Great Barrier Reef. In New South Wales, Biodiversity Stewardship Agreements generate tradeable biodiversity credits under the Biodiversity Offsets Scheme. A growing number of voluntary programs also exist, catering to diverse environmental outcomes and investor preferences.

Within this evolving landscape, locally grounded, high integrity schemes play an important role in translating policy ambition into tangible outcomes on the ground.

In the Wet Tropics, lowland tropical rainforest grows in the high-rainfall coastal stretch between Cooktown and Ingham, mostly below 100 metres in elevation. It’s an ecosystem that thrives particularly well below 40 metres on rich alluvial and volcanic soils.

These forests are characterised by a diverse mix of tall, evergreen tree species, some rising above the main canopy. Large leaves, buttress roots, vines and palms give the rainforest its lush, layered structure.

A rich variety of wildlife depends on this habitat, including the southern cassowary, striped possum, tree frogs and the vibrant Ulysses butterfly.

In the Wet Tropics more than 70 per cent of the original lowland tropical rainforest has been cleared. Listed as endangered under national environmental law, it is an ecological community of high conservation priority—one that urgently needs protection and restoration.

This reinforced riverbank, just upstream from the Daintree River ferry crossing, was well underwater in the recent flooding rain – so we’re happy to report it has emerged unscathed to continue to do its job of stopping erosion.

One hundred metres of this riverbank was restored last year. Erosion problems had been worsening for years and Cyclone Jasper accelerated things in 2023, sweeping chunks of riverbank down the river and threatening the road running alongside the river.

Our solution, working with partners Neilly Group Engineering, was a combination of engineered rock work, earthworks and revegetation (mangroves, grasses and trees). And tree rootballs were embedded into the rock wall to better protect the mangrove plantings from flooding and to begin to replicate habitat conditions in established mangroves where large logs and branches collect and provide fish habitat.

The reinforced riverbank has now gone through multiple high rainfall events, with the latest nearing record high flows. Mangroves growing on the rockwall’s benching were the only part of the design that was significantly affected in the March flood. They will recover as tidal flows bring more mangrove seedlings from nearby vegetation.

Terrain NRM partnered with the Douglas Shire Council and Jabalbina Rangers for this project, which aims to stop an estimated 1,200 tonnes of fine sediment a year from washing down the river and out to the Great Barrier Reef lagoon

Terrain NRM’s Zack Severino says revegetation is the long-term solution, after a combination of rock and earthworks.

“We were dealing with a sheer drop. With every storm, more soil was getting washed away. Now we have a reinforced riverbank. And the upland area has been planted out with native, fast-growing trees to get a good root system embedded. Mangroves have been planted on the benched areas to catch sediment and more seedlings, so that’ll also help to secure the riverbank, and also filter the water.

The ‘Daintree Wetlands: Reef Coastal Restoration in the Lower Daintree’ project is being delivered by Terrain NRM through funding from the Australian Government’s Reef Trust through their Reef Coastal Restoration Program grant.

Neighbours on the upper Beatrice River near Millaa Millaa are banding together to revegetate riverbanks and restore critical wildlife habitat – doubling a landmark restoration effort in one of Queensland’s most ecologically significant landscapes.

When coral scientists Dr Mary Stafford-Smith and Dr Charlie Veron bought their riverside property, they saw more than grazing land. They saw a rare opportunity to restore a stretch of upland rainforest that scientists have identified as one of the region’s most important refuges against climate change.

Now, with support from Terrain NRM, the couple and their downstream neighbour Bruce Jenkins are joining forces to restore upland rainforest on their properties and reconnect critical wildlife corridors.

Veron family: ‘We have big plans for this land”

The Veron family – Dr Stafford-Smith and Dr Veron along with daughter Eviie and son Martin – own four adjoining blocks near the headwaters of the Beatrice River, with 1.5 km of river frontage and remnant upland rainforest. Their property is in a priority wildlife corridor linking Maalan National Park to Wooroonooran National Park and it’s also considered to be an important climate refugia – a potential haven for species as climate change impacts increase.

“We have big plans for this land,” Dr Stafford-Smith. “When Terrain NRM invited a range of scientists and practitioners along for an on-site planning day last year, it enabled us to start putting a plan of action together and make connections with people who can support us, including the Mamu Traditional Owners.”

Bruce Jenkins: Cattle and conservation

Their downstream neighbour Bruce Jenkins, a semi-retired pub owner from the Northern Territory, was also at the planning day. Mr Jenkins bought his 120-acre grazing property seven years ago and has been quietly transforming it ever since – fencing off the river and springs to exclude cattle, establishing a rainforest nursery and planting thousands of native trees beside the Beatrice River.

“I just love trees and the environment,” he said. “I want to leave this place better than I found it.”

Both properties are now being supported through Terrain NRM’s Forest Resilience project, which includes revegetation, weed control, conservation agreements and wildlife-friendly fencing along the river to exclude cattle.

Feral pigs (Sus scrofa) pose a serious threat to the delicate ecosystems and agricultural landscapes of the Wet Tropics.

Highly invasive and destructive, these animals uproot native vegetation, spread weeds, prey on wildlife, and damage crops—causing both environmental degradation and economic loss.

WHAT ARE FERAL PIGS?

Feral pigs (Sus scrofa) are highly destructive, invasive animals found across the Wet Tropics. They damage ecosystems by uprooting vegetation, spreading weeds, and preying on native wildlife. Their presence also threatens agriculture, causing crop losses and soil erosion.

WHY ARE THEY A THREAT?

• Environmental damage: Pigs disturb soil, degrade waterways, and destroy native habitats.
• Agricultural losses: They eat crops, damage fencing, and compete with livestock for food.
• Disease transmission: Pigs can spread diseases like leptospirosis and foot-and-mouth disease.
• Increased weed spread: Their movement spreads invasive plant seeds, worsening weed infestations.

HOW TO CONTROL THEM ON YOUR PROPERTY

The Cassowary Coast pig trapping guide provides a comprehensive overview of what is involved in a successful trapping program, but the key elements are:

• Installing smart traps: Set up remote-controlled enclosures in high-activity areas.
• Using pre-baiting: Encourage pigs to enter traps by providing food sources.
• Monitoring remotely: Use cameras and sensors to track pig activity before triggering the trap.
• Following ethical guidelines: Ensure humane handling and disposal of captured pigs.