Boomitra Grassland Restoration in Northern Mexico

Audit Analysis

The Boomitra Grassland Restoration project in Northern Mexico has a VVB-confirmed additionality test and a 13% buffer pool, but is undermined by an extensive list of material findings questioning the scientific basis of its remote sensing model, a 0% leakage deduction for a livestock-related grassland project, and a project-specific modeled baseline. The project delivered roughly 61% of its pro-rata ex-ante expectation for the elapsed monitoring period, which is a positive signal against over-crediting, yet the volume of unresolved corrective actions and public comments challenging model robustness and uncertainty methodology raise significant integrity concerns.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠0% leakage deduction with only a 'deemed negligible' justification for a 553,486-ha grassland project involving livestock management — no quantified assessment of displacement or conversion leakage found in the PDD
• ⚠Remote sensing model calibrated with only 51 sampling points for a project exceeding 500,000 ha, with calibration data collected 2005–2012 (more than 5 years before project start) and no validation data from Northern Mexico or adjacent US areas
• ⚠35 corrective action requests and 2 forward action requests raised at verification, plus 69 CARs at validation, indicating persistent and unresolved methodological deficiencies
• ⚠Public comments (including September 2025) questioning the scientific basis of the measurement approach, model performance, and uncertainty methodology relative to Verra's VT0014 tool
• ⚠Project area discrepancy between registration (575,515 ha) and verification (553,486 ha) with KML files containing non-grassland ecosystems (sand dunes, roads, buildings)

Credit Vintages