A quick trip to Sydney for a day of inspiring restoration success stories!

Last Thursday (the 21st July 2016), I was very privileged to be one of 14 speakers from around Australia who were invited to share their restoration success stories – to mark the launch of the National Standards for the Practice of Ecological Restoration in Australia, and the 3oth Anniversary of AABR (the Australian Association of Bush Regenerators).

So how do you do justice in a short blog to such a diverse, interesting and inspiring day?!

I’m not sure, but this was one of the best single day events I have ever been to – and upon reflection, the reason was clear.

These were all stories of hope: getting on with the action, testing creative ideas and ultimately finding solutions to overcome challenges. No-one was deterred by obstacles or dwelt on the negatives, which is significant because – as we all know – this can be a common phenomenon at times in the environment sector.

This ‘can-do’ attitude was represented by talks that shared examples of ecological restoration success across terrestrial and wetland environments, riparian and river environments, islands pursuing lofty eradication goals and even crayweed forest restoration in the near shore marine environment.

Crayweed underwater forest restoration off the NSW coast – an inspiring story of marine revegetation triggering a self-sustaining process of natural regeneration and recolonisation

For my part, I told the story of wetland restoration from the Discovery Bay coast in SA and Victoria to a largely new audience, not so familiar with our part of the continent. If you are interested to learn more, you can see an overview in this pdf summary brochure.

Thanks to Tein McDonald for organising a fantastic event and to everyone involved for making the forum an extremely rewarding experience.

Footnote: the talks on the day were recorded, so in a future blog I hope to be able to provide a link to the presentations, to share these inspiring stories with you as well!