More Than $19m Raised to Buy 20,000-Hectare Wooroora Station in Far North Queensland

A conservation group has raised more than $19m in private donations to buy a vast cattle station in far north Queensland, and the land could be bought and protected by Christmas. Bush Heritage hopes to purchase Wooroora station, a tract that links wet tropics and world heritage rainforest and contains headwaters that flow to the Great Barrier Reef.

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

At least 12 threatened species and more than 30 species of conservation significance have already been recorded on Wooroora. Cassowaries and tree-kangaroos are among them, and the station is also the northernmost refuge for koalas. According to the would-be owners, it is almost certainly home to species yet unknown to science.

The land was at the centre of a dispute in 2024, when a plan to clear more than 500 hectares of Wooroora for a 42-turbine windfarm was rejected. The then environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, described the proposal's impact on the environment as unacceptable, including its effect on the spectacled flying-fox and the northern greater glider.

The chief executive of Bush Heritage, Rachel Lowry, said Wooroora would be the organisation's most ambitious single acquisition in its 35-year history. She said the move breaks a glass ceiling, and not just for Bush Heritage but for the sector more broadly.

Fundraising for the $24.7m needed to buy the land and manage it for an initial five years has been going on for more than 18 months. Lowry travelled to New York during the 2025 UN climate summit to make a presentation that helped result in a donation of almost $2.5m from the foundation associated with the US outdoor clothing company Patagonia.

An anonymous Australian philanthropist also donated $6m. Bush Heritage is now appealing to the public to raise the final $5.3m it needs by the deadline of 24 December. Lowry said Australia is a global biodiversity hotspot, so protecting Wooroora forever is not just a gift for Australia; when the group protects and manages country like Wooroora, it is leaving a legacy worldwide.

Jirrbal senior elder Uncle Kurt Noble said the land purchase would allow traditional owners back on proper Jirrbal land. There are a lot of stories within the family connected to this country, including Dreamtime stories as well as some of its history. In a recorded interview provided by Bush Heritage, Noble said his great-grandmother was born on the station, but he himself had not previously had the opportunity to visit.

Noble said much of their land is under private ownership, and access to come and go has been very restricted over many years, over generations. Renewed access would enable care and restoration not only for the environment, he said, but also for the cultural values of the land, allowing young people to grow up with a better understanding of country, language, song, cultural practices and significant sites.

Traditional custodian Liam Roberts, chair of the Wabubadda Aboriginal Corporation, said in another recorded video that Jirrbal people were hoping to jointly manage the reserve. They have rangers and work they would like to do on country, he said. Roberts said the station contained sacred artefacts along old Jirrbal trails and creeks, calling it beautiful camping country, beautiful fishing country and beautiful ecology. In the old days the pathways ran seasonally from dry country to wet country, and this is a key part of country that cannot be found anywhere else.

Bush Heritage's head of Queensland and the Northern Territory, Dr Jo Axford, said Wooroora includes one of the region's largest unprotected stretches of wet sclerophyll forest, towering eucalyptus grandis that forms a transition zone between ancient wet tropics rainforest and seasonally dry savannah woodlands. From its neighbouring reserve at Yourka, Bush Heritage had been actively seeking to acquire the station since 2010, because it provides the missing piece in a 429,000-hectare nature corridor that runs up to Cape York. Axford said Wooroora itself, long and narrow on a map, is almost like a key.

Wooroora rises to about 1,000 metres above sea level but falls to 660 metres within 10 kilometres. Axford said that creates a diverse mosaic of habitat that will allow threatened species such as the critically endangered magnificent brood frog to find refuges and hopefully adapt to a changing climate. The unusual topography also makes Wooroora one of the only places on Earth home to both the rainforest-dwelling southern cassowary and the plains-roaming emu, where Lumholtz's tree-kangaroos clamber through canopies near koalas. Axford said she is confident the station also harbours undescribed species: nobody has looked at the invertebrates or gone into all the gullies, valleys and huge rhyolite outcrops. Having flown over it in a helicopter, she said, you just know there must be many hidden secrets in there.