Cape York Water Partnership

26/08/2026

We are excited to share our new video on the Wetlands Without Hooves project.

This is Part 1, filmed before fencing the wetlands to find out how much wetlands change after feral pigs, cattle and horses have been excluded. Traditional Owner project partners and lead scientist Kim Stephan share concerns, future plans and aspirations for the recovery of wetlands in the absence of hooved animals.

Film produced by Braydon Moloney and funded through the Queensland Government’s Queensland Reef Water Quality Program.

We follow this Queensland Government Place-based project over two y...

30/06/2026

The CYWP Wetlands Project is documenting the impact of pigs, cattle & horses on wetlands biodiversity, carbon and greenhouse gas emissions.

The Wetlands team is currently completing the last of the wetland biodiversity and hooved animal impact surveys before fences go up around 5 of the 10 paired wetland sites. This is the second late wet season survey, and we are always amazed at how resilient and impressive the wetlands are compared with the end of the dry season.

Photos below show the comparison between dry season and post wet season condition at wetlands on Kalpowar and Normanby Stations. The lagoon at Normanby Station recovered from a dried-out pig wallow in the dry season to showcase an abundance of the threatened wetland plant Astonia australiensis. Incredible!

The CYWP Wetlands Project is part of the Reef Place-Based Integrated Projects funded through the Queensland Government’s Queensland Reef Water Quality Program. Additional funding for fencing has been provided by CYNRM.

30/04/2026

CYWP 2025-2026 Wet Season Monitoring Highlights – Part 2

2025-26 has been a massive wet season! Here are some more highlights from the Eastern Cape York Sediment Loads Monitoring Project.

🚣The River Water Quality (Sediment Loads) Monitoring field teams (CYWP and Traditional Owner partners) have braved the elements to collect flood samples and maintain continuous dataloggers across the Annan, Endeavour, Starcke, Normanby, and Pascoe rivers. The goal is to estimate annual loads of sediment (dirt) flowing out to the Reef from these rivers.

🌧 The largest flood event of the 2025-26 wet season for the Annan-Endeavour and Normanby catchments occurred in early March, followed by Cyclone Narelle around ten days later. These events inundated the lower Normanby catchment for weeks and created a massive floodwater plume in Princess Charlotte Bay that extended to the outer-reef and more than 100km to the north. Check out these NASA satellite images of the Normanby in March!

🧪Sadly, the flooding in March also damaged our equipment. The Scrubby Creek (upper Annan) dataloggers disappeared along with the tree they were attached to. The Battlecamp and Kalpower Xing (Normanby) dataloggers also experienced damage and loss of data. Along with malfunctioning Qld State river gauges, this will make it very difficult to estimate the flood magnitude and sediment loads flowing to Princess Charlotte Bay over this extreme wet season. Extremely disappointing!

However, we’ve still managed to gather plenty of data from these catchments and will continue to analyse the data and report on our findings from this exceptionally soggy year.

Satellite images: NOAA-20 and Suomi NPP / VIIRS satellite images from 10th and 29th of March

The Eastern Cape York Sediment Loads Monitoring Project is funded by the Queensland Government Office of the Great Barrier Reef and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.

24/04/2026

🌀Last month, Cyclone Narelle significantly impacted the Cape York region, particularly north of Princess Charlotte Bay. For the Pascoe River this was the biggest flood on record. Qld Government gauges on the Pascoe recorded river height levels 4m higher than any previous floods since measurements began in the 1960’s!

🌱These drone shots taken by Lana Polglase before and after the cyclone show the dramatic impacts on vegetation on the banks of the Pascoe River. Riparian zones like this bear the brunt of flooding, and their loss can lead to major increases in sediment loads flowing out to the Reef.

🛰️Satellite images from 22 March show sediment plumes from the Pascoe and Lockhart Rivers flowing more than 50 km past Eel Reef out to the outer reef.

🛥️CYWP has water quality dataloggers in the Pascoe estuary continuously monitoring sediment loads so we can document impacts from events like this. CYWP and the Kuuku Ya'u rangers also collected marine flood plume samples just after the cyclone to measure how much sediment and nutrients reached Eel Reef.

Video: Drone footage from Lana Polgase
Satellite image: NOAA 20 VIIRS (from NASA Earthwatch)

The Eastern Cape York Sediment Loads Monitoring Project is funded by the Queensland Government Office of the Great Barrier Reef and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation. Marine Water Quality is monitored as part of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Monitoring Program funded by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.