Yallalong Station Murchison HIR Aggregation

Yallalong Station Murchison HIR Aggregation is a Human-Induced Regeneration project located on Yallalong Station, approximately 270km northeast of Geraldton in the Murchison bioregion of Western Australia. Registered in August 2020 by proponent Australian Integrated Carbon Financial Services Pty Ltd, the project initially covered an area of 271,663.32ha, though a project area variation in July 2024 resulted in the removal of some listed areas.

Human-Induced Regeneration projects involve establishing permanent native forests through assisted regeneration from in-situ seed sources, such as rootstock and lignotubers. This is implemented on land where vegetation was cleared and regrowth suppressed for at least 10 years prior to the project commencing. Standard requirements dictate that the proponent must cease suppressing activities to allow the native forest to regenerate and reach a forest cover of at least 20% canopy cover and 2 meters in height. To achieve this, the project activities include the exclusion of livestock, careful management of the timing and extent of grazing, and the humane management of feral animals.

The Murchison bioregion is heavily dominated by pastoral leases primarily used for cattle and sheep grazing, alongside significant gold, iron ore, and nickel mining operations. The region experiences an arid climate with predominant winter rainfall averaging between 190mm and 240mm annually. The environmental conditions support low mulga (Acacia aneura) woodlands across a landscape characterized by red sandplains, broad plains of red-brown soils, flat colluvium, and alluvial plains.

As an interesting note, Yallalong Station has historically been a significant pastoral holding, once covering over 500,000 acres and originally selected by the Mitchell family. More recently, the remote off-grid cattle station made news by installing a large-scale solar and zinc-bromine flow battery microgrid system to drastically cut down its reliance on diesel generation. Within the carbon market, the project has been actively performing and was recently reported as having been issued 72,807 Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs).