3.1. Study area
The Northern Peninsula Area (NPA) is a local government area situated at the tip of Cape York, Queensland, Australia and adjacent to the Torres Strait to the north. Further to the north lies Papua New Guinea. The NPA is 105,207 hectares in size and incorporates the Indigenous communities of Bamaga, Injinoo, New Mapoon, Seisia and Umagico. Outside of these five communities, the vegetation and landscapes are diverse – including woodlands, grasslands, tropical rainforests, heathlands, wetlands and large river systems. It is a biodiverse subequatorial region (Gabriele-Rivet et al., 2020; Ward et al., 2021).