NESP MaC Project 3.8 - Carbon abatement and biodiversity enhancements through controlling feral ungulate disturbance in wetlands, 2023-2025 (UQ)

Updated: 2026-08-26

This record provides an overview of the NESP Marine and Coastal Hub small-scale study - Project 3.8 – Carbon abatement and biodiversity enhancements through controlling feral ungulate disturbance in wetlands. For specific data outputs from this project, please see child records associated with this metadata. Feral ungulates (e.g., cattle, pigs, buffalo) damage wetlands, reducing biodiversity, water quality and cultural heritage values, but funding for management has been inadequate. Feral ungulates may contribute to greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) through their disturbance of soils and vegetation, but the levels of carbon abatement achieved with their control is not well characterised across Australia. This project will work with Traditional Owners, academics and governments to characterise the benefits of feral ungulate control in wetlands, providing science that will underpin development of an Emission Reduction Fund method, where payments for carbon credits and biodiversity enhancements would fund management of feral ungulates on Country. Planned Outputs • Environmental habitat surveys [tabular dataset] • Greenhouse gas and soil carbon data [tabular data] • ungulate damage assessments [tabular data] • Remote sensing vegetation condition [scripts] • Wetland topology assessments [spatial] • Final technical report with analysed data and a short summary of recommendations for policy makers of key findings [written]