Yuinmery Station Regeneration Project

Yuinmery Station Regeneration Project is a Human-Induced Regeneration project located at Yuinmery Station, approximately 69km southwest of Sandstone and 127km southeast of Mount Magnet in the Mid West region of Western Australia. It was registered in March 2022 and covers 124,829.39 hectares, though a project variation in May 2022 removed specific areas from the project boundary.

Human-Induced Regeneration projects involve establishing permanent, even-aged native forests through assisted regeneration from in-situ seed sources, such as rootstock and lignotubers. The methodology requires changing land management practices on properties where vegetation was previously cleared and regrowth suppressed for at least 10 years prior to the project. For this specific project, the core activity is actively managing the timing and extent of livestock grazing to allow the suppressed native vegetation to regenerate.

The Sandstone and Murchison region is heavily utilised for pastoral leases and mineral exploration, particularly for gold and base metals. The area features a semi-arid climate with very low annual rainfall, averaging between 200mm and 280mm. The environment is shaped by deep-weathered landscapes typical of the ancient Yilgarn Craton, with soils largely consisting of red loams, red and yellow sandplains, and siliceous hardpan.

Yuinmery Station was first taken up in 1917 and has remained in the care of the Lefroy family for over a century. While the property historically operated as a sheep station to produce wool, heavy predation by wild dogs forced the family to transition the property to cattle operations starting in 2009. This major transition required removing over 400km of old sheep fencing. As an interesting ecological footnote, a minute species of desert insectivore, the inland forest bat (Vespadelus baverstocki), was first described to science using a specimen discovered at this exact location.