‘Old Bredbo’ is a 1,100-hectare farming property on Ngarigo Country in the Monaro region of New South Wales. In 2022, Canopy partnered with Greening Australia and the landholders to plant 25,000 native trees and shrubs across 65 hectares of the property as an environmental planting carbon project. The planting layout was co-designed with the landholders to meet the registration requirements of the Clean Energy Regulator and simultaneously achieve multiple conservation and farm production goals.
The project is expected to generate up to 20,000 high integrity nature-based Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) using the Environmental Plantings Methodology over 25 years. The first audit took place in 2024 and the first credits were issued in 2025.
In addition to capturing carbon and helping in the mitigation of climate change, the planting at Old Bredbo is designed to complement productivity by creating shelter for livestock, and improving pasture and grazing management by erecting several kilometres of new fencing.
Gullies on the property that flow into Strike-a-light River, as well as long sections of the river itself, have also been fenced to manage livestock impact. These areas have been planted with native trees and shrubs to reduce erosion and stabilise banks, ultimately improving water quality and reducing sediment flowing into the Murrumbidgee River catchment.
The property is changing hands, but the outgoing landholder has already seen benefits to the land from the planting. Speaking to him in March 2025, he said: “The changes to the creeks are so valuable, for us and for everyone downstream. Fencing off the creeks has enabled growth and regeneration, minimised erosion and changed the whole system. The water running off is cleaner and habitat along the creeks has changed – there are little pools forming, frog chorus everywhere. It looks so different; there’s much more vegetation.”
This is also a Koala Carbon® project. The selection of plant species and design of the planting at Old Bredbo will connect large patches of remnant bushland on two ridges neighbouring the property, providing habitat and safe passage across the valley floor for a variety of native animal species, including a Koala population which calls the Jerangle Range home.
