Cape York Water Partnership

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.

27/01/2026

We've just released our Summer issue of The Stream, where you can find out about:

🗞 the wrap-up of the Eastern Cape York Water Quality Program and where to find the resulting reports and other products
🗞 the Eastern Cape York Water Quality Strategy just completed as part of the DCCEEW Landscape Repair Program (LRP)
🗞 our new project measuring the impacts of hooved animals on wetlands carbon and biodiversity, in partnership with the Normanby Station, Muuntiwarra and Rinyirru Traditional Owners, and the University of Queensland
🗞 our sediment load monitoring work focusing on the Annan, Endeavour, Starcke, Normanby and Pascoe Rivers, in partnerships with the Traditional Owners of each of these regions
🗞 and more!

Read all about it! Go to:

https://www.capeyorkwaterpartnership.org/home/the-stream-summer-2026

📷Kim Stephan

29/06/2025

🌿🎉 What a night! We recently gathered at the Cook Shire Hall with partners, Traditional Owners, land managers and supporters to celebrate the wrap-up of the Eastern Cape York Water Quality Program.

Over 4 years, more than $9 million was invested in projects tackling erosion on roads, tracks and gullies, managing fire for water quality improvement and monitoring the health of our rivers, wetlands and seagrass meadows, from the Annan River all the way up to the Muck River.

The evening featured presentations from project teams, a sneak peek of our new program video, great food and music by the Harrigan Brothers 🎶

A big thank you to everyone who made this program—and this celebration—so special.

Stay tuned for our video, water quality priorities report and project factsheets to delve into the science and stories from this program

The ECYWQP is funded by the Australian Government’s Reef Trust and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation 💧🐢

Projects were delivered by



Photos:
Top: Our partners, guests and supporters at the event.
Bottom: Presenters at the ECYWQP End of Program Showcase and Celebration. L-R Sarah Herkess, John Witheridge, Ori Albert-Mitchell, Christina Howley, Alberta Hornsby, Jeff Shellberg, Jessie Price-Decle, Barb Rosendale, Denis Kelly.

03/03/2025

Seagrass hunting at Lizard Island!

CYWP, CSIRO and Dingaal Traditional Owners just returned from 5 days monitoring seagrass at Lizard Island as part of the ECYWQP Monitoring Project. The extensive seagrass meadows had not been comprehensively surveyed for 14 years. The weather was rough but we were able to survey seagrass cover and species composition at around 200 sites around the island, using a drop-camera connected to a tablet screen to view the seafloor down to 20m. Seagrass cover ranged from sparse to dense but was present across most survey areas. CYWP now have hundreds of images to analyse before we can compare the results with past seagrass condition.

Huge thanks to Geoff Carlin from CSIRO for help in the field and technical wizardry, Lucas, Len and Catherine at JCU Tropwater for sharing historic data and helping to plan our survey points, and to Lizard Island Research Station for hosting us on the island!

CSIRO

26/02/2025

Sharing an update for Jasper Environmental Recovery for our Jasper flood-impacted community.

Queensland Government has released another round of Local Conservation and Clean up grants, of up to $100 000, available now. The grants could support projects like smaller revegetation projects, or debris clean-ups.

Other funding to address Cyclone Jasper environmental impacts is likely to be released mid-year.

This content provides information on funding available from the Queensland and Commonwealth Governments to assist in the environmental recovery of declared severe weather events.

14/02/2025

Welcome back to our re-elected committee!

CYWP held our Annual General Meeting on Tuesday at Natures Powerhouse in Cooktown. It was great to share the accomplishments of what was an incredibly busy year with our members and supporters.

We extend our sincere gratitude to (from left, below) Gary Meredith-deputy Chair, Christina Howley-Secretary, Sue Marsh-Treasurer, and Alberta Hornsby-Chairperson. We’re so proud to have such a committed, experienced and stable board to see us through another busy year!

04/02/2025

Our latest edition of The Stream: Summer 2024-2025 is now available! 🗞💧🐠

As always, the Water Partnership team and our ECYWQP partners have been busy. In this newsletter, the teams provide updates on their work and reflect on what's been achieved since the program began. Plus, we take a look at the other work we're involved in - The Cyclone Jasper Environmental Investigations report, Eastern Cape York Water Quality Strategy, Reef 2050 Independent Expert Panel, and our upcoming AGM.

We hope you enjoy reading! 🛋😎
https://www.capeyorkwaterpartnership.org/home/the-stream-summer-2025


Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water South Cape York Catchments South Endeavour Trust Cape York Natural Resource Management

02/02/2025

Happy World Wetlands Day 2025!.

This year, the theme is "Protecting Wetlands for Our Common Future". This theme highlights the critical importance of wetlands for human wellbeing such as providing clean water, food, and protection against natural disasters such as flooding. It also recognises the urgent need for humans to return the favour and help wetlands function properly so they can best support all life that depends on their existence.

The Cape York Water Partnership are working with Traditional Owners, Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service, CYNRM and the University of Queensland over the next 3 years to better understand the impacts that feral pigs and cattle have on tropical wetland biodiversity, water quality, carbon stocks and greenhouse gas emissions. This will involve fencing a number of wetlands to measure differences before and after fencing, and between fenced and un-fenced wetlands.

Once we have measures of these impacts, this will help support the development of market methods and ultimately payments to landholders to reduce climate change gasses and improve biodiversity through feral pig management.

30/01/2025

Cyclone Jasper Environmental Impacts Technical Investigation and Community Engagement Report is now available on our website: www.capeyorkwaterpartnership.org

CYWP undertook an intensive review of technical data, along with extensive community engagement to produce the report, which showed that the community priorities were closely aligned with the scientific priorities. The report will be used by DETSI to inform the Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements (DRFA) for Cyclone Jasper environmental projects.

We are extremely grateful to everyone who contributed their valuable time, knowledge and experiences to this report. While not all of the priorities identified can be supported through the DRFA funding, CYWP will monitor and share other relevant funding opportunities as they arise.

Queensland Environment Wujal Wujal Aboriginal Shire Council