Walling Rock Station Regeneration Project

The Walling Rock Station Regeneration Project is a Human-Induced Regeneration (HIR) project located on Walling Rock Station, approximately 130 kilometers northwest of Kalgoorlie and west of the town of Menzies in the Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia. Registered in May 2018, the project covers a vast area of approximately 153,383 hectares. The station operates as a pastoral lease, historically used for grazing sheep and cattle within the Shire of Menzies.

Human-Induced Regeneration projects involve implementing land management changes to facilitate the regrowth of native forest where it has been suppressed. For Walling Rock Station, the primary activity involves managing the timing and extent of grazing pressure, essentially reducing livestock numbers or installing fencing to protect young vegetation from being eaten. This allows local native species, such as Mulga (Acacia aneura) and Eucalypt woodlands, to regenerate from in-situ seed sources like rootstock and lignotubers.

The region is characterized by a semi-arid to arid climate with low, irregular rainfall ("hot desert" classification). The terrain typically consists of sandplains and breakaways with soils ranging from deep red sands and loams to clay and laterite. These conditions support hardy vegetation adapted to drought, which the project aims to restore to forest cover.

An interesting aspect of this project is its proponent, Keith Charles Mader, a long-term pastoralist who has publicly advocated for pastoral rights in Western Australia, particularly regarding interactions with government agencies over sandalwood harvesting on leasehold land. The project is managed with the assistance of Select Carbon Pty Ltd, a major carbon service provider acquired by Shell Australia in 2020. The project held a carbon abatement contract (CAC540320) with the Australian Government which has been marked as completed, indicating the project has successfully delivered its contracted volume of carbon credits for that specific agreement.