Bora Regeneration Project

Bora Regeneration Project is a Human-Induced Regeneration (HIR) project located on the 'Bora' pastoral station, approximately 60km north-west of Brewarrina in the Upper Western region of New South Wales. Registered in March 2015, the project spans a significant area of 11,086 hectares. The surrounding landscape forms part of the Culgoa River catchment area, a region traditionally dominated by rangeland grazing of sheep and cattle.

The project operates under the Human-Induced Regeneration methodology, which differs from environmental planting by relying on nature's existing capacity to recover rather than manual tree planting. The standard requirements for this method involve identifying areas where native vegetation has been suppressed, usually by livestock grazing or feral animals, and removing those stressors. For the Bora project, this specifically involves the exclusion of livestock and the humane management of feral animals like goats and pigs, allowing in-situ seed banks and rootstock to regenerate into a permanent, even-aged native forest.

Environmentally, the Brewarrina district is classified as semi-arid, experiencing hot summers and variable rainfall averaging around 400mm annually. The soils in this specific area are typically a mix of Vertosols (grey cracking clays) associated with the floodplains of the Culgoa and Bokhara rivers, and Red Kandosols or Chromosols (red earth soils) found on the adjacent plains. These soil types support the regeneration of native vegetation communities such as Mulga, Poplar Box, and Coolibah, provided that grazing pressure is maintained at manageable levels.

The project is managed by a group of proponents including David Walker and members of the Bentick family, alongside John Beer, a long-standing figure in the Australian carbon market known for assisting landholders in establishing early Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI) projects. The project's registration in early 2015 places it among the established cohort of projects transitioning from the original CFI into the Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) framework.