Mouroubra Station Regeneration Project

Mouroubra Station Regeneration Project is a human-induced regeneration project located at Mouroubra Station in Western Australia, situated roughly 100km north of Beacon and 80km southeast of Paynes Find. It was registered in November 2018 and originally covered 130,565.95 hectares within the Mount Marshall local government area, acting as a transitional zone between the WA Wheatbelt and the outback rangelands. The region is historically known for pastoral land use, specifically sheep and goat grazing.

Human-Induced Regeneration (HIR) of a Permanent Even-Aged Native Forest involves establishing permanent native woodlands through assisted regeneration from in-situ seed sources, such as rootstock and lignotubers. To qualify, this methodology requires that the land was previously cleared of vegetation and that regrowth was actively suppressed for at least 10 years prior to the project's commencement. For this project, the core activities include managing the timing and extent of livestock grazing and humanely managing feral animals. By removing these suppressors, native vegetation is allowed to naturally recover and sequester carbon.

The environmental conditions of the region are characteristic of Western Australia's semi-arid rangelands. The area receives low rainfall, averaging approximately 280mm per year. The local landscape features alluvial plains and banded ironstone ridges with typical rangeland soils such as red sandy loams and clays, which naturally support native eucalypt woodlands (like Eucalyptus loxophleba), acacia shrublands, and saltbush understories.

The project is operated by Mathew Rubery in partnership with Select Carbon Pty Ltd. An interesting note about the property is that it also intersects with regional mining exploration; in 2022, Wepner Exploration entered into an agreement with the pastoral leaseholders, officially acknowledging and working around the ongoing carbon farming initiatives on the land. Furthermore, the project was successfully contracted by the government in December 2018, and its initial Carbon Abatement Contract (CAC539957) has since been completed. While a variation was made in August 2020 to remove certain areas from the project boundaries, the project has successfully generated over 34,000 Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) over its lifetime.