This article examines environmental narratives for their potential to contribute to the restoration of ecosystem health in areas recently degraded by agricultural activities, including Australian rural landscapes. Environmental narratives encompass oral environmental histories and other anecdotal sources of knowledge and perceptions that are bounded by the narrator's experiences, observations, and attachment to place. They are analogous to indigenous knowledge. Environmental narratives can make a significant contribution to ecological restoration. We argue that restoration ecologists should acknowledge the rigor of ecological knowledge gained through detailed observation of landscapes over lengthy time periods by nonscientists. Accordingly, we advocate a view of knowledge that permits multiple perspectives: local, indigenous, and scientific. Ecological restoration in fragmented agricultural landscapes is as much a cultural as a biophysical process. It requires an understanding of and respect for cultural attributes of landscapes, including the beliefs, values, and perceptions people hold about their local environment, such as a sense of loss felt for particular landscape components, features, or functions. Recent work in Australia shows environmental narratives emerging as a practical means of integrating these biophysical and cultural aspects in ecological restoration.

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More than 20 organisations use Conservation Action Planning (CAP), Healthy Country Planning and the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation in over 140 projects, covering almost 160 million ha across Australia. This review documents the history, evolution and application of CAP in Australia and discusses its strengths, limitations and lessons learnt by users, including conservation planners, practitioners and policymakers.

Bounded by ocean and desert, the isolated, predominately Mediterranean-climate region of south-western Australia (SWA) includes nine bioregions (circa 44 million hectares). The ecological integrity of the landscapes in this global biodiversity hotspot has been compromised by deforestation, fragmentation, exploitation, and introduced biota. Nature and degree of transformation varies between four interconnected landscapes (Swan Coastal Plain; South-west Forests; Wandoo Woodlands; and Great Western Woodlands). A Gondwanan perspective emphasizes a venerable biota and a cultural component to deep time. The particular importance of remnants and protected areas is recognized in restoring ecological integrity to Gondwanan landscapes. The nature and magnitude of the restoration task in these ancient, and neighboring, landscapes require higher levels of investment and more time than do recent landscapes. The protection, conservation, restoration, and rehabilitation of ecological integrity require multiple approaches in each landscape as well as consideration of the whole. Active conservation of biota and minimizing the impact of industrial-and agricultural-use are priorities. Integrating a climate focus and rethinking fire are critical restoration considerations to future trajectories under anthropogenic climate change. A legislative mandate to coordinate industrial-scale restoration and active conservation to build from protected areas must become a societal priority to restore ecological integrity.

The Gondwana Link (GL) program spans some 1,000 km and includes organizations, businesses, and individuals working to improve ecological function across the most intact large areas of habitat remaining in southwestern Australia (SWA). Noncompetitive leadership plus a focus on tangible achievement have been critical to providing the cohesion and initial momentum needed to support and inspire increased effort from those involved. Ongoing success rests on the responses of people working together, having respect for the integrity of the collective effort and for the specific roles of others across differing but complementary roles. Significant achievements have been secured, with progress in scientific knowledge generally following initial implementation of key actions. Lasting improvements in ecological health and resilience will only occur through larger-scale actions, which require more effort and time. The GL program has been an important initiative in strengthening the awareness of the distinctive ecological systems across SWA and the intertwined characteristics of resilience and fragility that characterize the region and its people. It has also had a role in inspiring and informing growth in large-scale connectivity programs nationally and internationally.