This week Gondwana Link was represented in a major forum of restoration researchers, practitioners, lawyers and students. Held in Hobart, and hosted by University of Tasmania, the forum was two days of presentation, review, structured discussion and reflection on what we’ve all learned about restoration and the emerging challenges.

The programs reviewed were as diverse as remediating polluted sites in Antarctica, restoring kelp forests, the legal interplay across farming landscapes and supporting Traditional Owner land management. Along the way we chewed through topics such as the role of apex predators, impact investing, fire management and plastic pollution. Very intense yet we were such a cohesive group it was enjoyable as well!

Keith Bradby and Curtin University’s Grant Wardell-Johnson presented on connecting people, landscapes and livelihoods in south western Australia, which will become the focus of two papers being prepared for a special issue of the journal Restoration Ecology.

Co-organiser for the forum was UTAS’s Professor Ted Lefroy, a distinguished academic whose first landcare job (1988) was with Keith and the original Fitzgerald Biosphere Project in Gondwana Link’s central zone.

Photo’s show the whole group on the wharf at Hobart, a core Gondwana Link crew of Grant, Stuart Cowell who led Bush Heritage’s program in Gondwana Link through the early years, Amanda, Keith and Bush Heritage ecologist Jim Radford. Plus a Tassie Devil seen on the field trip to our colleague program Tasmanian Midlandscapes, which involves Greening Australia, Bush Heritage and the Tasmanian Land Conservancy.