'Warana Regeneration Project

Warana Regeneration Project is a Human-Induced Regeneration (HIR) project located approximately 35km east of Wyandra in the Paroo Shire of south-west Queensland. It was registered in August 2015 and covers an area of 13,861.44 hectares.

Human-Induced Regeneration projects involve changing land management practices to allow native forests to regenerate from existing in-situ seed sources, such as rootstock and lignotubers. A standard requirement for this methodology is that the land must have been previously cleared of native vegetation and its regrowth actively suppressed by activities like grazing for at least 10 years prior to the project commencing.

The Paroo region is predominantly known for its extensive sheep and cattle grazing operations on native vegetation. The area experiences a semi-arid climate with low and highly variable rainfall, and local soils generally consist of sandy red earths, stony soils, and cracking clays on the alluvial plains.

In this project, the core activities implemented to encourage forest regeneration include the cessation of mechanical or chemical destruction of regrowth, alongside the careful management of the timing and extent of livestock grazing.

An interesting note about the Warana Regeneration Project is its successful participation in the Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) auction in November 2015, where it secured an active carbon abatement contract to deliver 153,296 Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) to the Commonwealth, having already successfully sold over 66,000 units. The project is managed by proponents Andrew Darcy Edwards and Lynette May Lee, with Climate Friendly Pty Ltd acting as the project agent. Additionally, this specific project was evaluated as a case study in a 2024 academic preprint analysing woody cover fraction (WCF) and regulatory compliance across Australian HIR projects using satellite-derived modelling.