Introduction: Growth in understanding of ecological restoration necessitates updated guidance for effective, equitable, and outcome-oriented restoration across terrestrial, inland water, and coastal and marine ecosystems. The third edition of the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) International Principles and Standards for the Practice of Ecological Restoration provides an expanded, evidence-based framework for ecological restoration aligned with the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and other global frameworks. Objectives: This revision clarifies terminology, updates Principles with current science and practice, provides expanded Standards of Practice, and improves the Five-star System. Methods: While key elements of the previous version were retained, substantial revisions were made. Results: This document synthesizes eight Principles of ecological restoration and details Standards of Practice spanning assessment, planning, implementation, ongoing management, and monitoring and evaluation. Standards are applicable across ecosystems and biomes, sectors, and diverse social and cultural contexts. Included are: (1) a clarified definition of ecological restoration emphasizing recovery of native ecosystems; (2) refined terminology and updated Standards of Practice; (3) zero-star baselines and increased quantification of the Five-star System; (4) an updated Restorative Continuum that refines the relationships between restorative activities and major restoration types and illustrates application to all major ecosystem types; and (5) expanded discussion of several complex topics. Conclusions: Applying the SER Standards can help reduce risk and uncertainty and enhance ecological restoration outcomes, including creating synergies with other restorative and conservation activities.

The intent of The Nature Conservancy in Australia has always been to optimise conservation outcomes for people and nature, partnering with government, Indigenous and private landowners through a range of initiatives. James Fitzsimons chronicles some of the organisation’s projects and reveals some of its secrets to success.

Ecological Management & RestorationVolume 22, Issue 3 p. 217-219 Editor's Perspective The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration may be the catalyst we need, but making it work will be up to all of us Tein McDonald, Tein McDonald Editor, EMRSearch for more papers by this author Tein McDonald, Tein McDonald Editor, EMRSearch for more papers by this author First published: 08 October 2021 https://doi.org/10.1111/emr.12511Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onEmailFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume22, Issue3September 2021Pages 217-219 RelatedInformation

Tony Parkes is the long-standing dynamo behind Big Scrub Landcare, a rural landholder group bursting with vision and commitment to bring the best science and practice to the task of restoring what was Australia's largest tract of subtropical rainforest. What has helped this rural Landcare group become strongly linked to science and best practice?

We all experience the syndrome where we unconsciously lower our expectations to normalise what we might otherwise experience as a constant stream of losses. In this issue, Steve Sinclair and colleagues talk about this ‘shifting baseline syndrome’ in their feature article about how we seem not to have noticed the loss of some 11 previously common Victorian basalt plains grassland forbs. The authors imply it is likely to be a process of gradual ‘forgetting’ as the species slowly disappear from the landscape and we no longer encounter them. It is not unusual for something that we think of as common (or at least not ‘special’) to become neglected, squandered or lost. We just do not happen to notice; we adjust our baselines. The grasslands themselves, like so many ecosystems, were once common in the Victorian basalt plains and were considered so un-special that they could be reduced to 0.15% of their prior range. So it is no surprise that once-common forbs also disappear. The same story is repeated for many hundreds of previously ‘common’ but now endangered ecosystems around this continent and the rest of the world. This process was brought home to me one recent weekend when I was helping out Canberra’s Friends of Grasslands’ at one of their leased Travelling Stock Reserves on the Monaro Tablelandsx, NSW. We turned up as planned for the weed working bee and alighted from our vehicles, donning our tool belts and grabbing weed bags as usual, making ready to ‘enter’ the reserve. Having never visited the site before, I was looking forward to entering one of the most intact and species-rich remnants of what is a rapidly declining regional grassy ecosystem. But we did not have to enter it. We had, contrary to my expectations, stepped straight into a grassland. The very road verge was a high-quality area rich in native grasses and forbs. It is hard to explain the effect this had on me, to explain how startled I was to realise that I had expected degradation as a matter of course, but here my expectations were turned upside down. We expect rural roadsides to be degraded, and to find such a rich tapestry on a rural roadside triggered a realisation that I will never forget. It dawned on me that the condition of this site was how it was across the whole landscape only a century and a half ago, around the time of my own grandmother’s birth. I looked across at the expanse of healthy ecosystem and experienced the shock of imagining healthy grassland, replete with wildflowers, extending everywhere the eye could see across the full range of what is now weed-dominated grazing land. The sense of wonder was closely followed by a rising anger at the thought that it had taken our forebears such a short time to so completely and effectively destroy this rich legacy. The baseline had suddenly shifted back for me, and the grief at what has been lost over a century and a half hit me as if the loss had only just recently occurred. Such an experience would be termed by some as solastalgia, and by others as pure nostalgia for something that is of the past, never to return. But why is it necessarily the case that healthy Australian ecosystems must be a thing of the past? Not too far from this very site on the Monaro there is one farmer turning the tide, shifting his pastures to native species for a different sort of prosperity; earning a living while bringing back biodiversity better suited to future climates than the European pastures that are so dependent on inputs and irrigation. And I suspect that others will follow his example in years to come. Indeed, good news stories about bringing back ecosystem health abound in this issue of EMR. In our interview with the Nature Conservancy (TNC)’s, James Fitzsimons, for example, tells how TNC’s initiatives to privately purchase land for conservation started in New York and have now spread across the world, having been taken up by many other independent private land trusts. TNC has expanded into other endeavours, helping the realisation of many of the most well-judged and effective restoration initiatives in Australia, from arid to marine ecosystems and involving both public and private players for a range of social–ecological benefits. Certainly, we cannot bring back all that is lost – but we have some chance of (i) stemming the loss before more things that are common become threatened with extinction and of (ii) bringing back what we most value, even if that valuing requires new knowledge. Whether it is forgotten annual forbs in a basalt plains grassland (Sinclair and colleagues), shellfish reefs of Port Phillip Bay (Diggles this issue), freshwater fishes of the Murray-Darling (Boys and colleagues) or Lumholtz’s tree-kangaroo in north Queensland (Heise-Pavlov and colleagues), efforts are being made to avoid the shifting baseline syndrome and to restore important biodiversity. It figures perhaps that, should these efforts result in a return of these species and ecosystems, the likely increasing exposure to them by more and more people (coupled with the special effort taken) will gradually reset society’s expectations in a positive rather than negative trajectory. And if these were to start to decline again, we might care sufficiently to notice. Yes, remembering causes grief but grief at the loss can prompt the necessary effort to do something about it.

Abstract Widespread global declines in shellfish reefs (ecosystem‐forming bivalves such as oysters and mussels) have led to growing interest in their restoration and protection. With restoration projects now occurring on four continents and in at least seven countries, global restoration guidelines for these ecosystems have been developed based on experience over the past two decades. The following key elements of the guidelines are outlined: (a) the case for shellfish reef restoration and securing financial resources; (b) planning, feasibility, and goal setting; (c) biosecurity and permitting; (d) restoration in practice; (e) scaling up from pilot to larger scale restoration, (f) monitoring, (g) restoration beyond oyster reefs (specifically mussels), and (h) successful communication for shellfish reef restoration projects.

David Lindenmayer leads six large-scale, long-term research programmes in south-eastern Australia to help conserve biodiversity in restored areas on farmland as well as conservation in reserves, national parks, wood production forests and plantations. What makes this award-winning researcher tick and how is the research influencing biodiversity management and policy?

Australia already has the highest rate of species loss of any region in the world, yet the risks suddenly worsened in the spring–summer of 2019–20, with an unprecedented chain of wildfires covering 10 M ha of the nation’s forest and woodland estate. Fires of this scale were unprecedented and not factored into recovery plans for Threatened Species or ecosystem management in general. EMR asks one of Australia’s most pre‐eminent ecologists what can be done to ameliorate the losses and better avoid and respond to such impacts occurring in the future?

The ‘cure’ for maintaining the health of our human populations from COVID-19 has been halting social functioning, which is unravelling economic systems and damaging the livelihoods of many people. There will be winners and losers, and social institutions and economies may take long timeframes to recover. Indeed, they may not be the same again. This is not dissimilar to the ecological consequences of Australia’s recent bushfires. Building of ecosystems takes a long time if they are damaged to the extent caused by these fires, given that they followed extensive and broadscale drought and landscape drying. Over 1 billion mammals, birds and reptiles are likely to have been killed, according to calculations by Professor Chris Dickman whose interview on the subject is featured in this issue along with many other articles of value. Flooding rains followed rapidly in some cases, washing ash and soot into streams and rivers, realizing many of the losses in aquatic species anticipated by ecologists. The Australian government’s post-bushfire emergency response included food drops and fauna rescues for some species, not unlike the way society is now delivering economic stimulus and rescue packages for some businesses. This was rapidly followed by manipulations to reduce predation and competition, carried out in a manner not unlike the way financial assistance is being doled out to renters and mortgage holders. But, as Professor Dickman explains, there is in fact very, very little that we can do to help faunal populations recover once they have been hit so hard. Like in a complex economic system, the survival of ecosystems ultimately relies on the survival and reproductive capacity of the components and we hope to hell that the linkages that are so important can rapidly reconnect if severed. It is likely in this case, however, that the damage to fauna will prove to be very high and will have long-term repercussions. If a complex system cannot recover it changes shape. Changing shape can be a good thing if it improves our social and economic ‘work in progress’ – for example by reducing excessive global connectivity, revaluing regional and local industry and nurturing social relationship. But the same cannot be said for ecosystems that are works of nature, upon whose former shape we depend. The work of humans in this situation is not so much to find ways to change nature but to find ways that we can reduce our impacts upon it so that it can persist and repeat catastrophes can be averted. There are myriad small ways to reduce potential impact during and immediately after wildfire and even strategies available to establish insurance populations of threatened species in advance of catastrophes, as outlined in the Threatened Species Recovery Hub blueprint (Dickman et al. 2020), cited in the Dickman interview. But the two main causal factors of the impact of the recent fires cannot continue to be ignored and require enormous effort and creativity to collectively address. These are our impact upon climate, causing increased drying and thereby the extent of fires – and the total area and configuration of our land clearing, causing fragmentation of habitats and thereby reducing potential for fauna recolonization. The temporary ‘absence’ of humans during the global COVID-19 pandemic has been good for nature, but our complete absence should not be necessary to conserve ecosystems. There may well be ways that humans can limit our impacts and interact with the rest of nature without putting our civilization or ecosystem at risk. Such ways may, interestingly, have their roots in ways our forebears related to each other and the rest of nature, evidenced by cultural practices that many Indigenous and traditional societies still maintain. Indigenous patch burning coupled with western science, in particular, offers insights into ways Australians could potentially create habitat mosaics without causing more fragmentation. Reconnecting habitats at a landscape level is still possible and necessary without causing further risk to humans and can be part of the solution to the carbon emission crisis. But this can only be successful if we simultaneously and collectively reduce global warming and its consequences through a radical change to economic systems that reduce land clearing and dependence on fossil fuels, alternatives to which appear to be distinctly possible. Our economic system has suffered a massive shock. The difference between creative disruption and damage is whether we can learn from it and rebuild our economies in ways that better serve the needs of both humans and the rest of nature.

Preparations are mounting across the globe for the start of the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021–2030). The United Nations Environment Programme team is working with multiple partner non-profit organisations across Australia and New Zealand to promote the main messages of the Decade - which are to ‘massively scale up the restoration of degraded and destroyed ecosystems as a proven measure to fight climate change, and enhance food security, water supply and biodiversity’ (https://www.iucn.org/theme/nature-based-solutions/decade-ecosystem-restoration). United Nations (UN) dedications present us with important opportunities to gain leverage for public communication and have previously made valuable contributions to public policy and on-ground actions. This time four decades ago, for example, Frank Scarf of the United Nations Association of Australia (UNAA) and Valerie Swain of the Nursery Industry Association of Australia (NIAA) combined their substantial talents to initiate the International Year of the Tree, which was held in 1982. Their main legacy was to form the non-profit organisation, Greening Australia, to help protect, restore and conserve Australia's native vegetation. On the UN’s World Environment Day of that year, then Prime Minister of Australia, Malcolm Fraser, announced the establishment of the National Tree Programme, which aimed to reverse tree decline throughout Australia, with Greening Australia providing the non-government arm of the Programme. Soon after, the first Landcare groups started forming in Victoria, with Rick Farley (National Farmer’s Federation) and Barbara Hardy and Phillip Toyne (Australian Conservation Foundation) successfully lobbying the Hawke Government to announce the 1990s as the Decade of Landcare in Australia, committing $320 million to fund Australia’s National Landcare Programme. As in Australia, community initiatives in New Zealand have been similarly supported by government, and governments have responded – not least due to pressure from the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) that requires all signatory nations to have a national biodiversity strategy and action plan, guiding national implementation of the CBD’s Strategic Plan and its Aichi Targets. Despite a promising start and some significant improvements over the last two decades, the strategies of neither country have delivered its stated aim of reversing biodiversity decline. In New Zealand, several objectives were achieved despite government agency priority shifts – and iwi (Māori tribes) and community-led conservation and restoration initiatives continued to grow. Recent policy and funding developments, however, signal the scale shift needed for effective restoration of ecosystems and threatened species populations. The Predator Free 2050 programme (PF2050) the government approved in 2015 aims to eradicate Stoat, Ship rat, Norway rat and Possum, the most detrimental of invasive small mammals, from the whole of New Zealand. The movement spans many agencies and communities. In addition, the One Billion Trees programme (1BT) was initiated in 2017 with funding of $238 M released in 2018 for planting exotic and native trees across mixed land-use types. The multiple goals include climate change mitigation and environmental protection. The proportion of native trees that will eventuate is unclear. To reflect the increased scale of work needed, a revised Aotearoa New Zealand Biodiversity Strategy (Te Mana o te Taiao), led by the New Zealand Department of Conservation, has just been ratified and launched. The new strategy has sought to address the systemic structural and funding issues that constrained the previous strategy and has ambitious goals, including restoration from the mountains to the sea, within a bicultural (Treaty of Waitangi) framework. In contrast, Australia’s ‘reformed’ biodiversity strategy – now called ‘Australia’s Strategy for Nature’ – takes a more broad brush approach and expresses its goals in ‘feel good’ terms (‘improve’, ‘enrich’, ‘enhance’ and ‘share’) without rigorous targets. This may be due to the fact that the environment is a State rather than Federal responsibility, but little leadership is provided in the national Strategy to prompt States to adopt the ambitious, clear and measurable targets needed to make a difference. While both Australia and New Zealand have clocked up two more decades of bipartisan support for publicly funded environmental recovery programmes, it could also be said that these decades, at least in Australia, have simultaneously been decades of continued degradation. While there is a public perception of improving environmental responsibility, legally enabled environmental destruction continues under pressure from expanding development in many states of Australia and in many countries of the world. Furthermore, a rolling back of environmental protections is occurring under the cover of the need for rapid economic recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic, a matter of great concern all over the world. Despite the aspiration of so many to environmental protection and recovery, our global economic systems remain philosophically bound up with untrammelled growth of a kind that can only destroy natural ecosystems. Unfortunately, such growth is too frequently disguised as ‘sustainable development’ when it is nothing of the kind. Greenwashing is very easy due to a watering down of ecologically meaningful commitment to the principle of conservation of biological diversity and is likely to be rampant in scenarios where there is less-than-thorough commitment to international agreements (particularly those relating to emissions reduction) and international ‘years’ or 'Decades'. The Decade on Ecosystem Restoration is based on a broad concept of ‘ecosystems’ – correctly recognising that the ways we manage our urban and rural landscapes matters to the health and integrity of all ecosystems. But that health and integrity must be sufficiently predicated on native biodiversity – i.e., a genuinely ‘restorative’ approach as outlined in the international SER Restoration Standards – if such policies are not to facilitate environmental destruction. We hope that the Decade on Environmental Restoration will not be used by governments to claim green credentials on one hand while destroying nature on the other. Let’s start the Decade with economic initiatives that have real potential to provide enduring benefits for freshwater ecosystems and water quality, biodiversity and climate change mitigation. There is potential for such action, supported by governments and community. In New Zealand, for example, the all of government response to COVID-19 impacts tasks DOC with working closely other government agencies to deliver a $1.3 B Jobs for Nature Programme which will provide 11,000 people temporary job opportunities over the next four years. Advocacy for a similar stimulus package has recently been led by Pew Charitable Trusts in Australia, supported by scores of non-government conservation, restoration and farming organisations with shovel-ready projects. Pew estimates Federal and State governments could roll out 24,000 jobs at a cost of $2.4 billion in the first year, with funds and employment reducing over the following 3 years for a total potential budget of $4 billion. Although it is still unclear the degree to which the governments of Australia will respond, $130M has already been committed by the States to increase environmental jobs with a similar investment in environmental infrastructure planned. One attraction of such stimulus packages is that they can build on core environmental programmes of both countries, programmes that can be readily expanded. Their economic and social benefits are obvious, but their economic benefit is not confined to increasing consumer confidence and keeping money circulating. Indeed, such programmes can build demand to drive a potentially lucrative environmental management industry contributed to by the private sector. In this way, post-COVID-19 economic stimulus programmes and postbushfire investment – supported by philanthropic investments such as those coming from Restore Australia and other overseas donors – can allow the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration to really count in our region.

This issue of EMR is focused on the theme of feral horses in Australia's Alpine Parks. Its papers are largely but not exclusively drawn from presentations at the ‘Feral Horse Impacts: The Kosciuszko Science Conferee’ held on Thursday 8th November 2018 at the Australian Academy of Science, Canberra. All papers have been peer reviewed through EMR's rigorous review process. Five research reports have been prepared, and provide peer-reviewed evidence to inform the debate surrounding the environmental impacts and management of feral horses in Australia's alpine parks. These studies, involving many authors from a range of universities and government agencies, identify that damage (attributable to feral horses, as well as deer to a lesser extent) has been widespread and is likely to increase with the increasing populations predicted by modelling. Alpine meadow structure is already showing evidence of impacts from grazing in locations frequented by horses, alpine stream banks are being compromised, and wetlands (that provide critical habitat for populations of Threatened animals) are showing evidence of trampling and draining. These papers are supported by a synthesis paper that provides an in-depth analysis of a range of options for efficient and effective action. Two editorials provide perspectives on the current controversy surrounding prohibition of culling of feral horses in alpine parks in New South Wales and Victoria. One of these provides an ecosystem management viewpoint, emphasizing the wisdom of humane culling informed by ecological evidence, while the other provides a social history perspective. The issue is also enriched by a comment piece by a social scientist that highlights the complexity of social factors that need to be addressed if solutions are to be found. Providing an important context to the recent research on impacts of feral horses is a paper by Stuart Johnston and the late Roger Good, documenting the long, difficult and expensive ($10M) work already undertaken to restore Kosciuszko National Park after damage by livestock in the 19th and 20th centuries. Many additional millions have also been invested in restoring the Park's alpine wetlands after the 2003 wildfire. Clearly this work is highly relevant to the feral herbivores debate given that, should feral herbivore damage be allowed to continue, a massive restoration effort would be needed; and this time it is likely to be more expensive and outcomes more uncertain given climate change. The unconscionability of this is reflected in the Kosciuszko Science Accord, signed by 90 scientists including those present at the Australian Academy of Science conference. This Accord is published in this issue, as is the NSW Scientific Committee's Final Determination of Feral Horses as a Key Threatening Process. This provides yet another independent assessment of the seriousness of feral horses as a threat to the important task of biodiversity conservation. Providing peer-reviewed data can assist with informing agencies, governments and communities at a range of levels about impacts. It can draw inferences and make recommendations. But it cannot provide the ultimate solutions. The solutions must come from society through informed and civil discourse and the development and implementation of more thoughtful policy, well informed by the biological, ecological and social sciences. We hope that assembling these papers and contextual material will provide clearer information for the future development of policy with regard to this challenging management issue, an issue that extends well beyond the Australian alpine parks to many parts of Australia and other parts of the world.

Ecological restoration, when implemented effectively and sustainably, contributes to protecting biodiversity; improving human health and wellbeing; increasing food and water security; delivering goods, services, and economic prosperity; and supporting climate change mitigation, resilience, and adaptation. It is a solutions-based approach that engages communities, scientists, policymakers, and land managers to repair ecological damage and rebuild a healthier relationship between people and the rest of nature. When combined with conservation and sustainable use, ecological restoration is the link needed to move local, regional, and global environmental conditions from a state of continued degradation, to one of net positive improvement. The second edition of the International Principles and Standards for the Practice of Ecological Restoration (the Standards) presents a robust framework for restoration projects to achieve intended goals, while addressing challenges including effective design and implementation, accounting for complex ecosystem dynamics (especially in the context of climate change), and navigating trade-offs associated with land management priorities and decisions.

This year marks the twentieth volume of what seemed, only yesterday, to be the Ecological Society of Australia's ‘new’ management-oriented journal, Ecological Management & Restoration (EMR). EMR is now well established, with a respectable Impact Factor. And it is changing with the times. It is now available in electronic format only and is available to all Ecological Society of Australia (ESA) members as part of their membership, along with ESA's considerably older ecological journal Austral Ecology. We can ask ourselves, however, to what degree has EMR progressed with the realisation of its catchphrase ‘Linking science & Practice’ over the past two decades. We can observe that, during this time, EMR has published papers on a diversity of topics that can assist managers conserve and restore native ecosystems: papers on successes and limitations in restoration and management planning, implementation and monitoring as well as those introducing new techniques. As is reflected in the content of this issue, EMR has sought to publish reviews and research reports that help to fill knowledge gaps or present philosophic or technical innovations along with case studies describing largely practitioner efforts to manage and/or restore particular sites. The EMR editorial board has sought to attain this improved integration of science and practice by ensuring EMR: In addition, EMR has sought affiliate relationships with practitioner ecological management and restoration non-profit organisations to attract contributions and promote the journal to a wider readership. This has resulted in the accumulation of a substantial body of published case studies. To celebrate the twentieth anniversary, ESA and Wiley, the joint owners of EMR, will compile an open access virtual issue of 20 practitioner case studies, with updates simultaneously published on the journal's project summaries website. The importance of this will be to not only share case studies with researchers but to hopefully attract more and more practitioner readers to meet the ongoing aspirations of the EMR board and ESA Council. Yet is this enough? No, our best work is never enough. Despite the good work of the journal over the past 20 years, massive challenges remain in terms of communication between science and practice. This is not so much because there is communication gap per se. Largely, it is because the challenges of managing native ecosystems – emerging from increasing development pressure – are unprecedented in type and scale. These threats need to be grasped by both managers and researchers so that we can unite in our efforts to communicate relevant content that can assist society as a whole conserve and manage native ecosystems for their own sake and the sake of humanity.

Evans and Davis claim the SER Standards use a “pure naturalness” model for restoration baselines and exclude most cultural ecosystems from the ecological restoration paradigm. The SER Standards do neither. The SER Standards consider both “natural” ecosystems (that are unequivocally not cultural) and “similar” cultural ecosystems as suitable reference models. Furthermore, Evans and Davis propose assessing whether a cultural ecosystem exhibits “good, bad, or neutral impacts from humans on ecosystems” as the basis for reference models. We argue that such an approach would overlook the indispensability of native ecosystem benchmarks to measure human impacts and provide a springboard for social‐ecological restoration.

Mike Dodkin’s career as an officer with the NSW National Park and Wildlife Service spanned four decades. His work involved ecological surveys of potential new conservation reserves, overseeing rehabilitation works after mineral sand mining, supporting innovative restoration projects in rainforest and coastal dunes, and pioneering work in marine mammal rescue. In this interview, Mike reflects on those activities and the changes he has witnessed over time.

Change over time is of primary interest for ecologists and managers. Change can be positive and is often part of nature's flux, but it can also be negative if arising from impacts that push ecosystems beyond net sustainability. Researchers work long and hard to develop methodologies to gain insight into how much change is part of acceptable flux and how much is unacceptable impact; and monitoring change is also essential to identify levels of recovery over time after restorative management interventions and, in many cases, to fully test hypotheses. This issue's interview with Mike Dodkin, retired naturalist ranger and pest species officer, touches on all these themes as he recollects projects over a 40-year period. Mike was there during the period of social change that saw mineral sand mining on Australia's east coast sites destined for dedication as national parks post-mining. His role not only included finding ways to reduce mining impacts and attain recovery, but also involved starting up new restoration projects to overcome damage that occurred many decades previously – all such projects which will take many decades hence to be fully realized. In a similar vein in this issue, Brad Farmilio and colleagues report about changes in plant composition after 10 years of monitoring in grazed native pastures in south-eastern Australia after an incentive scheme to reduce impacts on grassland remnants; Richard van Dongen and colleagues observe changes in native vegetation on Dirk Hartog Island, Western Australia many years after removal of non-native herbivores; and, Andrew Carter and Laura Ruykys document a gradual eradication of introduced predators in a fenced reserve in South Australia The passage of time is also important to fully test new hypotheses. Hannah Franklin and colleagues in New Zealand tested the capacity of a range of native riparian plants to take up nitrogen and propose a framework for selecting species that can best buffer farm runoff into streams. Longer term study of riparian plantings based on this model will provide valuable insights, as will application of the value-based arguments for seascape repair put forward by Vishnu Prahalad and colleagues in this issue's second feature and Linda Luck and colleagues’ longer term testing of residual herbicides to reduce Gamba Grass populations in northern Australia. Indeed, all our interventions to improve the functionality of impaired ecosystems could be considered tests of hypotheses, including the core hypothesis that interventions can make a positive difference. Ian McLeod and colleagues acted on an informed hunch in North Queensland that relocation of coral colonies displaced by a cyclone would result in recovery, and all the indicators are pointing to success in this case and many others. In this and many cases involving lower-to-establish species or processes, only time and ongoing monitoring will tell. For example, longer time frames have proven to be useful in the detection by Tai White-Tony and colleagues of long-term patterns of establishment of tree species after mine site restoration in the Jarrah Forest in Western Australia – as well as to allow Kimberly McCallum and colleagues to assess the relationship between the configuration of planted species and their effective pollination in South Australian revegetation sites, many years after plant establishment. With the passage of time also comes change in personnel, such that longitudinal studies and ongoing nurturing of long-term recovery require commitments by institutions that persist beyond the working lives of individuals. It is hard to overstate the need for future managers and researchers to recognize the amount of past work that has gone into many studies and into securing the current condition of many sites. We need to firmly but gently remind current and future generations that long-term effort in these areas is a multi-generational compact.

The restoration of habitat has become a priority for many citizens and governments as the ecological and societal benefits of these habitats have been become more widely recognised.

Confusion surrounding the definition and application of terminology in post-mining ecological repair has resulted in uncertainty for industry, the scientific community and regulators. This lack of clarity may underrepresent high aspirations or could be misused to disguise low aspirations and so is problematic for setting objectives, establishing goals and assessing recovery trajectories. We respond to a recently published analysis of the ecosystem repair literature, where we highlight inconsistencies stemming from inadequate reference to a large proportion of the restoration and rehabilitation literature. We outline increasingly well-accepted and internationally applied definitions concerning the restoration and recovery process and invite both the mining industry and policy-makers to re-examine their terminology in the interests of attaining an internationally agreed nomenclature. Clarity in the use and understanding of terminology will align post-mining targets with community expectation, enhance the capacity of the mining industry to understand and meet these targets, and foster better analysis and more industry-relevant discussion of recovery methodologies by the scientific community and practitioners.