We Cannot Learn from Habitat Restoration without Funding Monitoring

Large-scale land interventions such as habitat restoration and revegetation of previously cleared landscapes are becoming increasingly popular throughout the world. In many cases these initiatives seek to protect and where possible increase biodiversity while maintaining agricultural productivity. There are many positives to these projects, such as engaging landholders in habitat protection and rehabilitation, and increasing connectivity through usually highly fragmented landscapes.

A variety of plant species ready for planting in South Australia. Photo by Sacha Jellinek.

Governments are increasingly funding these initiatives, partly for outcomes that benefit the local community and environment, and also in an effort to satisfy carbon reduction targets relating to climate change policies, as is the case in Australia. Although revegetation has the potential to help accomplish these outcomes, information about how to achieve good restoration results is generally lacking. For example, millions of dollars are spent on revegetation activities in Australia each year, yet few of these projects adequately monitor planting survival, or what influences planting success. Fewer study if and how native animals use these restored areas. This means that many large-scale land restoration initiatives are not fulfilling their promises of social, climatic and ecological benefits because we don’t know what restoration success or failure looks like.

There are some studies looking at the drivers of restoration survivorship and animal use of replanted areas but our ability to learn from large-scale restoration activities is limited because such research and monitoring activities are seldom funded. At the same time there are a variety of toolkits that outline steps to properly plan and implement restoration actions, but none provide guidelines to adequately assess restoration success through time.

A recently planted and guarded site protecting lake edge habitat.

Funding is needed from governments and the private sector not only so that the success of their restoration programs can be measured, but also so that other natural resource managers can learn how to undertake restoration activities most effectively. Providing funding to undertake research and monitoring can help foster links between community groups, land management agencies, universities and other research institutions. This would not only have ecological benefits, but it would allow agencies to cost-effectively undertake conservation initiatives whilst building better relationships between on-ground practitioners and academics.

Similarly, incentives are also needed that help landholders engage in conservation actions, such as paying them to protect and maintain remnants and restored areas. Allowing landholders to sell their carbon credits generated as a result of these management activities may also encourage this, but uncertainty in carbon markets usually limits such programs. Without funding monitoring, we allow this uncertainty to persist. Ultimately, we need to learn from our restoration mistakes if we are to ensure social and ecological benefits of large-scale land interventions.