Badja Station Regeneration Project

The Badja Station Regeneration Project is a large-scale Human-Induced Regeneration (HIR) project located on the Badja pastoral lease, approximately 50km south of the township of Yalgoo in the Mid West region of Western Australia. Registered in November 2018, the project encompasses a massive area of 104,411 hectares.

The project operates within the Yalgoo bioregion, an area traditionally dominated by pastoral grazing (sheep and cattle) and mining activities. The landscape is characterized by a semi-arid to arid climate with low, variable rainfall averaging around 250mm annually. The soil composition typically consists of red earth, shallow loams, and hardpan plains which support native vegetation such as Mulga (Acacia aneura) and Bowgada shrublands.

Human-Induced Regeneration (HIR) projects differ from tree planting initiatives; instead of manually planting seedlings, the methodology relies on managing external suppressors, primarily grazing pressure from livestock and feral animals, to allow native forests to regenerate naturally from existing in-situ seed banks and rootstocks.

An interesting historical note regarding the property is that prior to the carbon project's registration, Badja Station was the proposed site for a national radioactive waste management facility by Gindalbie Metals in 2015, at which time the station was destocked. The project is currently managed in partnership with carbon service provider Select Carbon, a subsidiary of Shell.