Murray <scp>C</scp>atchment habitat restoration: <scp>L</scp>essons from landscape‐level research and monitoring

Lindenmayer, David B.; Willinck, Emmo; Crane, Mason; Michael, Damian; Okada, Sachiko; Cumming, C S; Durant, Kylie; Frankenberg, Judy

doi:10.1111/emr.12051

Cited by 9 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 38 publications

(89 reference statements)

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“…Long‐term funding stability is a priority issue in biodiversity conservation in agricultural landscapes (Lindenmayer et al ). AES by their nature are not financially self‐sustaining, requiring long‐term funding to achieve restoration across large scales.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Softening the agricultural matrix: a novel agri‐environment scheme that balances habitat restoration and livestock grazing

Ansell

Fifield²,

Munro

et al. 2015

Restoration Ecology

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The loss and degradation of woody vegetation in the agricultural matrix represents a key threat to biodiversity. Strategies for habitat restoration in these landscapes should maximize the biodiversity benefit for each dollar spent in order to achieve the greatest conservation outcomes with scarce funding. To be effective at scale, such strategies also need to account for the opportunity cost of restoration to the farmer. Here, we critique the Whole‐of‐Paddock Rehabilitation program, a novel agri‐environment scheme which seeks to provide a cost‐effective strategy for balancing habitat restoration and livestock grazing. The scheme involves the revegetation of large (minimum 10 ha) fields, designed to maximize biodiversity benefits and minimize costs while allowing for continued agricultural production. The objectives and design of the scheme are outlined, biodiversity and production benefits are discussed, and we contrast its cost‐effectiveness with alternative habitat restoration strategies. Our analysis indicates that this scheme achieves greater restoration outcomes at approximately half the cost of windbreak‐style plantings, the prevailing planting configuration in southeastern Australia, largely due to a focus on larger fields, and the avoidance of fencing costs through the use of existing farm configuration and infrastructure. This emphasis on cost‐effectiveness, the offsetting of opportunity costs through incentive payments, and the use of a planting design that seeks to maximize biodiversity benefits while achieving production benefits to the farmer, has the potential to achieve conservation in productive parts of the agricultural landscape that have traditionally been “off limits” to conservation.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Softening the agricultural matrix: a novel agri‐environment scheme that balances habitat restoration and livestock grazing

Ansell

Fifield²,

Munro

et al. 2015

Restoration Ecology

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“…Table 1 shows a small subset of ecological concepts and theories that have broad relevance to restoration ecology and were used to guide a range of studies of restoration programs in the temperate woodlands of south-eastern Australia. Importantly, the use of theory proved to be instructive in reshaping new phases of restoration programs, including in areas where they had not previously been applied (Lindenmayer et al, 2013). For example, threshold theory suggests there should be critical breakpoints in vegetation cover below which losses of biodiversity will be extremely rapid and many species will not be able to persist (Andren, 1994;Radford et al, 2005;Haslem et al, 2015).…”

Section: Ecological Theory or Concept Description Examples/citationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This can promote knowledge exchange and facilitate rapid adoption of improved management practices (that are revealed from the results of monitoring). This has occurred in revegetation programs in Australian temperate woodlands, where sciencemanager partnerships have fostered rapid changes in on-theground practices such as increasing the width of linear plantings between grazing paddocks (Lindenmayer et al, 2013).…”

Section: The Critical Need To Improve Monitoringmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving Restoration Programs Through Greater Connection With Ecological Theory and Better Monitoring

Lindenmayer

2020

Front. Ecol. Evol.

Self Cite

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Millions of hectares of land worldwide is in urgent need of restoration. However, many past landscape and ecosystem restoration efforts are likely to have been less than effective. Some of the reasons for these problems include a lack of monitoring, or being subjected to poor quality monitoring practices, or that the restoration efforts are too often not linked with ecological concepts and/or theory. These deficiencies make it difficult to: (1) identify general principles for broader application beyond site-specific insights, (2) quantify success, and (3) identify general ways to improve restoration programs. In this paper, I outline some personal perspectives on how these deficiencies might be addressed using insights from two decades of work on restoration in the temperate woodlands of southeastern Australia. I argue problems associated with a lack of monitoring and limited connection to ecological theory need to be rectified if future landscape and ecosystem restoration programs are to be more successful than those in the past and are to deliver better ecological returns on investment. This should help enhance learning and boost the potential for continuous improvement in restoration efforts.

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“…However, it is important to note differences in vegetation attributes among woodland types as such differences can influence their value as habitat for some animal species. For example, many reptile species are dependent on woody debris (Michael et al 2014(Michael et al , 2015 and hollow-bearing trees are a critical habitat requirement for some mammals and birds (Lindenmayer et al 2013). Thus, Boree Woodland will support a different faunal assemblage relative to Black Box Woodlands where logs and hollow-bearing trees are intrinsically more abundant.…”

Section: Effect Of Woodland Typementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Presently, most intact examples of the pre-European condition of endangered woodland communities exist in Travelling Stock Reserves (TSRs) (Lindenmayer et al 2010b;Lentini et al 2011b;Davidson and O'Shannassy 2017). TSRs are often regarded as the 'reference condition' for these temperate woodlands (Prober et al 2002;Lindenmayer et al 2012Lindenmayer et al , 2013Michael et al 2014) and are of high value for biodiversity conservation (Yates and Hobbs 1997;Lindenmayer et al 2010a;Smiles et al 2011;Lentini et al 2011b). These linear strips and small blocks of remnant vegetation are public reserves originally established to facilitate movement of livestock to major city markets and around the landscape (Spooner 2005;Lentini et al 2011b).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The importance of travelling stock reserves for maintaining high-quality threatened temperate woodlands

et al. 2017

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Travelling stock reserves (TSRs) are thought to represent some of the highest-quality and least degraded remnants of threatened temperate woodland in south-eastern Australia. These public reserves have not had the same high levels of grazing pressure and other disturbances as woodland remnants on private land. Thus, TSRs are expected to be important for the protection of biodiversity in heavily cleared and modified landscapes. We tested the hypothesis that land tenure had significant effects on the quality of woodlands by comparing vegetation structural attributes between TSRs and remnant vegetation used for primary production purposes. Vegetation attributes were monitored in 155 permanent plots over 5 years in remnant temperate woodland sites in the Riverina bioregion of New South Wales. Overall, TSRs supported higher native plant species richness and were characterised by higher ground cover of native shrubs and less cover of exotic plant species than agricultural production areas. We found land tenure had significant effects on some vegetation attributes demonstrated to be important for threatened fauna. We attribute these results to TSRs having a history of lower grazing pressure compared with remnants managed for agricultural production. Our study provides empirical evidence to support the high conservation value of TSRs in formerly woodland-dominated, but now extensively cleared agricultural landscapes.

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Murray Catchment habitat restoration: Lessons from landscape‐level research and monitoring

Cited by 9 publications

References 38 publications

Softening the agricultural matrix: a novel agri‐environment scheme that balances habitat restoration and livestock grazing

Softening the agricultural matrix: a novel agri‐environment scheme that balances habitat restoration and livestock grazing

Improving Restoration Programs Through Greater Connection With Ecological Theory and Better Monitoring

The importance of travelling stock reserves for maintaining high-quality threatened temperate woodlands

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