Forest Carbon CoOp

Forest Carbon CoOp is an aggregated Plantation Forestry project managed by WeAct Pty Ltd. Unlike single-property projects, this initiative is dispersed across multiple privately owned landholdings in Tasmania and Victoria, covering a total area of approximately 402 hectares (initially registered in April 2020). The project operates in distinct regional clusters: the Meander Valley and Central Coast regions of northern Tasmania (near Deloraine and Ulverstone), the Tasman Peninsula in southern Tasmania, and the Victorian regions of the Pyrenees Shire (near Ararat) and Wangaratta Rural City.

The project operates under the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative, Plantation Forestry) Methodology Determination 2017. This methodology incentivizes the establishment of new plantation forests (Schedule 1) or the conversion of existing short-rotation plantations, typically harvested for woodchip, into long-rotation plantations yielding sawlogs (Schedule 2). By extending the harvest rotation or establishing new timber stocks on previously cleared land, the project increases the average volume of carbon stored in the trees over time compared to the "business as usual" baseline.

The environmental conditions across these sites are characterized by cool, temperate climates with reliable rainfall, which is essential for commercial timber production. In the Tasmanian sectors, particularly the north-west and Meander Valley, the landscape often features fertile Ferrosol soils (red volcanic soil) supporting mixed farming, dairy, and forestry. The Victorian sites near Ararat and Wangaratta generally experience a slightly drier, yet still productive, climate with texture-contrast clay and loam soils, traditionally utilized for grazing and broadacre cropping before being converted to timber plantations.

A unique aspect of the Forest Carbon CoOp is its structure as an aggregation vehicle. By bundling smaller plantation areas, ranging from roughly 20 to 100 hectares each, under a single Project ID, WeAct reduces the administrative and audit costs that would otherwise make carbon crediting unviable for individual small-scale foresters. The project targets the sequestration of over 150,000 tonnes of CO2 over its lifetime and focuses on Pinus radiata (Radiata Pine), a standard softwood species for the Australian construction industry.