Paroo River North Environmental Project

The Paroo River North Environmental Project is a Human-Induced Regeneration (HIR) project located approximately 85km northwest of Cunnamulla in South West Queensland. Registered in November 2016, the project covers a substantial area of 52,905 hectares within the Paroo Shire. This region, part of the Mulga Lands bioregion, is traditionally dominated by sheep and cattle grazing operations.

HIR projects differ from environmental plantings in that they do not involve manual tree planting. Instead, they rely on regenerating native forests from in-situ seed sources (such as rootstock and lignotubers) by removing suppression activities. In this specific project, the primary activity involves managing the timing and extent of grazing to allow vegetation, likely Mulga (Acacia aneura) woodlands, to regenerate to a forest cover status. The area is characterized by a semi-arid climate with rainfall generally between 300mm and 450mm annually, and the landscape typically features red earth soils (Kandosols) and sandy loams known for low fertility but high resilience.

Notably, the project has seen several administrative changes, transferring ownership from Corporate Carbon Solutions to individual stakeholders and finally to the current joint proponents, Lanin Holdings Pty Ltd and Ninal Ventures Pty Ltd. While an initial carbon abatement contract (CAC864407) for the project lapsed or was terminated, a subsequent contract (CAC887022) was secured in March 2020 to deliver 410,000 tonnes of abatement. The project has also attracted attention from major corporate players, with Woodside Energy listing the proponents and project type in their climate transition reports, indicating the purchase or origination of credits from this aggregation.