Woodleigh Station Regeneration Project

Woodleigh Station Regeneration Project is a Human-Induced Regeneration (HIR) project located on Woodleigh Station in the Gascoyne region of Western Australia, approximately 160km south-southeast of Carnarvon and 50km east of Hamelin Pool. It was registered in May 2018 and initially covered 415,526.10 hectares, though a variation in May 2024 resulted in specific areas being removed from the project boundary.

Human-Induced Regeneration projects involve establishing permanent native forests by changing land management practices to encourage the regrowth of native vegetation from in-situ seed sources, such as rootstock and lignotubers. The standard requirement for this method dictates that the land must have been previously cleared of vegetation and that subsequent regrowth was actively suppressed for at least 10 years prior to the project commencing.

The Gascoyne region is known for extensive pastoral operations, primarily low-intensity sheep, cattle, and goat grazing on native pastures. The area is classified as semi-arid with low annual rainfall, and the regional soils largely consist of red sands, calcareous earth, and sandy loams with hardsetting surfaces.

This project achieves regeneration specifically through the management of the timing and extent of livestock grazing, which removes the suppression pressure and allows native flora to reach forest cover. Notably, the project successfully completed its fixed delivery carbon abatement contract (CAC852979) with the Australian Government in January 2022. An interesting geological fact about the project area is that Woodleigh Station sits directly above the Woodleigh impact structure, an immense, multi-ringed buried meteorite crater discovered in 2000 that is estimated to be between 60 and 120 kilometres in diameter.