31/08/2026
MEDIA RELEASE
31 August 2026
Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) Must Walk Away From Gawara Baya Wind Farm: A Train-Wreck for North Queensland Biodiversity
Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners’ decision to acquire and financially close the Gawara Baya Wind Farm is a shocking development for biodiversity conservation in North Queensland, with devastating consequences for some of Australia’s most threatened and iconic wildlife.
Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP), the Danish investment company, has today announced that it has acquired the Gawara Baya project from Windlab and reached financial close, with construction of the 408 MW wind farm and 104 MW battery project now expected to commence. The project involves 68 wind turbines on Gugu Badhun Country south-west of Ingham.
While the project is being promoted as clean energy, clean energy should never mean sacrificing irreplaceable biodiversity.
Gawara Baya is located in an exceptionally important landscape adjoining the Wet Tropics region and provides habitat for threatened species including the Sharman’s rock-wallaby, northern greater glider, koalas and red goshawk. The project's own environmental documentation identifies hundreds of hectares of habitat for these species within the development area.
The Sharman’s rock-wallaby is particularly concerning. Colonies have been identified throughout the Gawara Baya site, with their boulder-field habitats earmarked for dynamiting.
The northern greater glider and red goshawk will SUFFER severe impacts due to habitat destruction, fragmentation, collision deaths, and noise and disturbance impacts, which will cause LOCAL EXTINCTION.
A biodiversity project cannot be called “clean” if threatened wildlife pays the price.
Wind turbines, access roads, transmission infrastructure, vegetation clearing, construction activity, vehicle movements, noise and habitat fragmentation all have the potential to alter this landscape and increase pressures on threatened species.
There are also serious concerns about the cumulative impacts of renewable-energy infrastructure across North Queensland, particularly where projects are being concentrated in landscapes that retain important habitat and ecological connectivity.
The Gawara Baya project is not simply a collection of turbines on an already industrialised site. It is being developed in a landscape that forms part of the broader ecological bioregion surrounding the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area. The project's own ecology reports that the Wet Tropics' ecology extends beyond the World Heritage Area boundary.
The fact that a project has obtained regulatory approval does not mean that every environmental concern has disappeared. Nor does financial close make the biodiversity risks acceptable.
CIP should reconsider its investment.
Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners has presented Gawara Baya as an opportunity to deploy capital into Australia's clean-energy transition. But investment in renewable energy should be consistent with responsible environmental stewardship.
CIP should walk away from Gawara Baya.
The company has the opportunity to demonstrate that international renewable-energy investors will not simply inherit projects because they have received approvals, but will critically examine whether those projects are genuinely compatible with the protection of Australia's most threatened wildlife.
If CIP proceeds, it risks becoming internationally associated with a project that conservationists have warned will place additional pressure on some of North Queensland's most important threatened species.
The answer to climate change cannot be to destroy or fragment the very ecosystems we are trying to protect from climate change.
A call for responsible investment
We call on Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners to:
• Immediately reconsider its financial commitment to Gawara Baya;
• Suspend construction activities while independent biodiversity concerns are properly examined;
• Commission genuinely independent assessments of cumulative impacts on the Sharman’s rock-wallaby, northern greater glider and red goshawk;
• Demonstrate that its investment standards for Australia genuinely put biodiversity protection alongside climate objectives.
Gawara Baya should not become a test case for how much biodiversity Australia is prepared to sacrifice in the name of ‘green’ energy.
Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners is a Danish company with the financial capacity to choose where it invests. It should choose not to invest in this train wreck of a development.
The message to CIP is simple: walk away from Gawara Baya and invest in renewable energy where it can be delivered without putting irreplaceable wildlife at risk.
Mt. Fox Progress Association
