A record acquisition for conservation

The conservation group Bush Heritage has collected more than $19m in private donations to buy Wooroora station, a cattle property in far north Queensland, and says the deal could be finalised by Christmas. The Wooroora station Bush Heritage deal - buying and managing the land for an initial five years - will cost $24.7m, with the fundraising effort now more than 18 months old.

Chief executive Rachel Lowry said Wooroora would be the organisation's most ambitious single acquisition in its 35-year history. In her view, the scale of the fundraising sets a new benchmark - one she argued reaches beyond her own organisation to the wider conservation sector.

Bush Heritage has pursued the station since 2010, calling it the "missing piece" in a 429,000-hectare nature corridor that runs up towards Cape York.

Rare habitat and threatened species

Wooroora covers more than 20,000 hectares of largely intact wet sclerophyll forest and savanna woodland on Jirrbal land, about 100km south-west of Cairns, and borders the group's existing 43,575-hectare Yourka Reserve in one of Australia's most biodiverse regions.

• •At least 12 threatened species and more than 30 species of conservation significance have been recorded there, among them the cassowary and tree-kangaroos.
• •The property is also the northernmost refuge for koalas.
• •The land rises to about 1,000m above sea level, dropping to 660m within 10km, a spread of habitat that supports threatened species such as the critically endangered magnificent brood frog.
• •Dr Jo Axford, Bush Heritage's head of Queensland and the Northern Territory, said the property holds one of the region's largest unprotected stretches of wet sclerophyll forest, where eucalyptus grandis marks the transition from wet tropics rainforest to dry savannah woodland.

Axford described the station as long and narrow, almost like a key on a map, and said this shape and topography make it one of the only places on Earth where the rainforest-dwelling southern cassowary and the plains-roaming emu both occur, with Lumholtz's tree-kangaroo living near koalas. She is confident undescribed species are still to be found, noting that nobody has surveyed the invertebrates or explored the gullies, valleys and rhyolite outcrops.

Traditional owners return to country

Jirrbal senior elder Uncle Kurt Noble said the purchase would allow traditional owners back on "proper Jirrbal land". In a recorded interview, he said his great-grandmother was born on the station, but he had never had the chance to visit it himself.

Noble said access to Jirrbal country has been tightly limited for generations because so much of it is privately held. Renewed access, he said, would allow care and restoration not only for the environment but for "the cultural values of our land", and would let Jirrbal young people grow up with a better understanding of country, language, song and cultural practices.

Liam Roberts, chair of the Wabubadda Aboriginal Corporation, said Jirrbal hope to jointly manage the reserve, with rangers and work they would like to do on country. He noted the station holds "sacred artefacts" along old Jirrbal trails and creeks, and described it as beautiful camping, fishing and ecology country, part of old seasonal pathways running from dry to wet country.

The final appeal

The campaign received a boost after Lowry travelled to New York during the 2025 UN climate summit, where a presentation helped bring in a donation of almost $2.5m from the foundation linked to US outdoor clothing company Patagonia. An anonymous Australian philanthropist has also given $6m.

• •Bush Heritage needs $5.3m more to reach its $24.7m target.
• •The public appeal closes on 24 December.
• •Once the deadline passes, the purchase of Wooroora could be completed and the land protected.