Feral-ungulate control to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from wetlands

Ungulate activity changes vegetation cover, disturbs soils, increases erosion, reduces water quality, impacts biodiversity, and increases greenhouse gas release through trampling of wetland substrates. Despite the well-known extent of ungulate damage and community concern, paucity of funding has limited the consistency, and therefore success, of control efforts.

If feral ungulate control can be developed and justified as a novel carbon abatement methodology, the current funding shortfall for control activities can likely be addressed via the Emission Reduction Fund and Nature Repair Market frameworks.

However, strong evidence is needed to participate in these programs; currently, this is lacking.

This project aims to provide this evidence by quantifying greenhouse gas emissions under various ungulate impact and control scenarios; and, to also assess the feasibility of participation by calculating the potential profit versus the cost and effort.

Approach

This project will work collaboratively with Traditional Owner organisations and others, to gather evidence and assess cost-effort by:

• measuring greenhouse gas emissions from different types of wetlands;
• comparing emissions resulting from varying degrees of ungulate activity;
• measuring soil carbon, ground disturbance, and vegetation features;
• assessing current and past control methods and programs; and
• costing various control measures to support cost/benefit analyses for land managers.

Variation to Project 3.8 (February 2026)

This project has an approved variation that will begin in 2026.

The variation will focus on developing and validating techniques to report changes in wetland condition resulting from ungulate management across Australia. All abatement methodologies require robust techniques to establish baselines and the impacts of management activities. This variation will help strengthen those approaches.

A draft carbon market methodology that awards carbon credits for reducing wetland disturbance by ungulates is available at https://ungulatecarbon.com.au/. To date, most work has focused on monitoring and verification at the project scale. The next step is to build tools that consistently assess impacts at the national scale.

The aim is to do this using remotely sensed imagery, such as satellite data. These tools will be important for reporting changes in wetland condition and greenhouse gas abatement in Australia’s National Greenhouse Gas Inventory.

Expected outcomes

• Natural resource protection and greenhouse gas emission abatement.
• Indigenous communities’ aspirations for ungulate control met, and funding for control-jobs accessed.
• An evidence-based case for ungulate control as a novel carbon abatement system.

Project location