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Summary1. Increasingly, river managers are turning from hard engineering solutions to ecologically based restoration activities in order to improve degraded waterways. River restoration projects aim to maintain or increase ecosystem goods and services while protecting downstream and coastal ecosystems. There is growing interest in applying river restoration techniques to solve environmental problems, yet little agreement exists on what constitutes a successful river restoration effort. 2. We propose five criteria for measuring success, with emphasis on an ecological perspective. First, the design of an ecological river restoration project should be based on a specified guiding image of a more dynamic, healthy river that could exist at the site. Secondly, the river's ecological condition must be measurably improved. Thirdly, the river system must be more self-sustaining and resilient to external perturbations so that only minimal follow-up maintenance is needed. Fourthly, during the construction phase, no lasting harm should be inflicted on the ecosystem. Fifthly, both pre-and postassessment must be completed and data made publicly available. 3. Determining if these five criteria have been met for a particular project requires development of an assessment protocol. We suggest standards of evaluation for each of the five criteria and provide examples of suitable indicators. 4. Synthesis and applications . Billions of dollars are currently spent restoring streams and rivers, yet to date there are no agreed upon standards for what constitutes ecologically beneficial stream and river restoration. We propose five criteria that must be met for a river restoration project to be considered ecologically successful. It is critical that the broad restoration community, including funding agencies, practitioners and citizen restoration groups, adopt criteria for defining and assessing ecological success in restoration. Standards are needed because progress in the science and practice of river restoration has been hampered by the lack of agreed upon criteria for judging ecological success. Without well-accepted criteria that are ultimately supported by funding and implementing agencies, there is little incentive for practitioners to assess and report restoration outcomes. Improving methods and weighing the ecological benefits of various restoration approaches require organized national-level reporting systems.

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Stream restoration has become a multibillion dollar industry worldwide, yet there are few clear success stories and the scientific basis for effective stream restoration remains uncertain. We compiled data on completed river restoration projects from four management authorities in Victoria, Australia, to examine how the available data could inform the science of restoration ecology in rivers, and thus improve future restoration efforts. We found that existing data sources are limited and much historical information has been lost through industry restructuring and poor data archiving. Examining records for 2,247 restoration projects, we found that riparian management projects were the most common, followed by bank stabilization and in-stream habitat improvement. Only 14% of the project records indicated that some form of monitoring was carried out. It is evident that overall there is little scientific guidance and little or no monitoring and evaluation of the projects for which we had information. However, recent advances with mandatory, statewide reporting and an increased emphasis on project design and monitoring strongly suggest that the design, implementation, monitoring, and reporting of stream restoration projects have improved in recent years and will continue to do so.

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