Bush Heritage seeks to buy Queensland cattle station to anchor 429,000-hectare conservation corridor

Bush Heritage Australia is seeking to buy Wooroora, a 20,000-hectare cattle station on the edge of Far North Queensland's World Heritage-listed wet tropics, in what the organisation says is its most ambitious acquisition.

The property sits between Yourka, an existing Bush Heritage conservation reserve, and the Koombooloomba and Tully Falls national parks. Securing it would anchor a 429,000-hectare conservation corridor and safeguard what the group says is the largest unprotected area of wet sclerophyll forest in the region, along with headwaters that flow onto the Great Barrier Reef and habitat spanning more than 50 ecosystem types, from rainforest gullies to 1,000-metre bluffs.

The bill for Wooroora is $24.7 million, including the first five years of intensive management needed to turn a cattle property back into wilderness. Bush Heritage is working to raise $5.3 million to secure the property and support its broader work. Under an agreement with the current owner, it already has early access, and Jirrbal Indigenous rangers are preparing to run eco-surveys. The property is expected to transfer to Bush Heritage's control next year.

Dr Jo Axford, head of Bush Heritage's northern properties, said Wooroora was unusual because, despite its agricultural history, only small patches had been cleared and about 98 per cent of its bushland was intact. "It's very unusual to find a pastoral property like that now, but the property hasn't been cared for," she said, citing fire management, weed management, cattle removal and feral animal control as priorities.

Ecologist Emily Rush described the grassy woodland as the most precious part of the property. Wet sclerophyll forest, dominated by giant rose gums, is essential habitat for yellow-belly gliders and the northern bettong, one of the top 20 mammals most at risk of extinction. "Up here in the wet tropics, we have about a million hectares of continuous rainforest," Rush said. "But we only have about 54,000 hectares of wet sclerophyll forest up here, in really fragmented patches."

Rare finds on the property include a northern stronghold of magnificent brood frogs and a Lumholtz's tree kangaroo captured on camera in a pocket of rainforest. At the neighbouring Yourka reserve, koalas returned in 2020, a platypus was recorded in 2022, and a new species of fungi was described in 2023.

Bush Heritage began in 1990 after Bob Brown, then a Tasmanian state MP, used his Goldman Environmental Prize money as a down-payment to protect Liffey Valley from logging. The not-for-profit says it has secured 44 properties and 1.5 million hectares across Australia.