Darling River Conservation Initiative - Site #2

Darling River Conservation Initiative - Site #2 is a Human-Induced Regeneration (HIR) project located approximately 65km west-northwest of Cobar in western New South Wales. It was registered in October 2018 and covers a project area of 17,733.11 ha.

Human-Induced Regeneration projects involve altering land management practices to allow native forests to naturally regenerate on land where tree regrowth was historically suppressed for at least 10 years. These projects must demonstrate the potential to reach a forest cover standard, typically requiring native trees to attain a minimum of 2 metres in height and a 20% canopy cover across the project area.

The Cobar region is well known for extensive pastoral agriculture, predominantly rangeland grazing for sheep, feral goats, and beef cattle. The local environment features a semi-arid climate with low, highly variable rainfall averaging around 390mm annually. The region's soils are typically red sandy loams, loamy-clays, and red earths, which support hardy native vegetation such as Mulga.

This project establishes permanent native forests through assisted regeneration from in-situ seed sources, including resilient rootstock and lignotubers. To foster this regrowth, the project activities include closely managing the timing and extent of livestock grazing alongside the humane management of feral animals to prevent overgrazing. Developed by Terra Carbon Pty Limited, a subsidiary of major environmental markets developer GreenCollar, this site is part of a much larger multi-property conservation aggregation spanning the Darling River basin. The project is hosted on a family farming property known as "Blue Hills." The landholders have utilised their diversified carbon income to build new firebreaks, upgrade fencing for rotational grazing, aggressively manage feral goats, and hire local staff, ultimately improving the land's drought resilience for future generations.