Bundanon Trust - Landcare Living Landscape - Regeneration Program (Revoked)

Bundanon Trust - Landcare Living Landscape - Regeneration Program is a human-induced regeneration project located in Illaroo, approximately 15 kilometres northwest of Nowra along the Shoalhaven River in New South Wales. Registered in September 2015 and covering 58.94 hectares, the project area is situated in a region historically utilised for cattle grazing, farming, and agriculture, while also featuring significant pockets of high conservation value bushland.

Human-Induced Regeneration (HIR) projects establish permanent even-aged native forests by promoting assisted regeneration from in-situ seed sources, such as rootstock and lignotubers. This methodology is strictly applied to land that was previously cleared of vegetation and where natural regrowth had been suppressed for at least 10 years. For this specific project, the primary activity involved the management and eradication of non-native plant species to allow native vegetation to recover.

The Illaroo and broader Shoalhaven area features a temperate, high-rainfall coastal climate. The regional environment consists of varying soil types, typically characterised by fertile alluvial soils along the river flats transitioning into texture-contrast loams and clay soils across the higher slopes and grazing paddocks.

An interesting note about this project is that it took place on the 1,100-hectare Bundanon property, which was uniquely gifted to the Australian people in 1993 by the renowned artist Arthur Boyd and his wife Yvonne. The regeneration program was a core part of the 'Living Landscape' initiative, an environmental and educational collaboration involving Landcare Australia aimed at increasing biodiversity, eradicating weeds like lantana, and sequestering carbon on degraded agricultural land. While the broader initiative successfully restored large parts of the property's native habitat, this specific HIR carbon project was officially revoked in April 2019 under section 30 of the CFI Rule.