It takes a community to restore a community

Dr Carole Elliott (Research Scientist), Dr Peter Golos (Research Scientist)

Solving the puzzle of banded ironstone plants

In the Mid-West of Western Australia Kings Park Science is working hard to restore unique threatened ecological communities which exist only on banded ironstone ranges.

These iron-loving plants have specific requirements and, not surprisingly, their own plan of how to survive in this often dry and hot location. Figuring out what they require or what their plan is for persisting in the environment generates a mélange of puzzles. Solving these unique puzzles enables us to restore these communities successfully, but unlike a crossword or Sudoku, no answers are provided at the back of the book!

This is where many brilliant minds came together to work on restoration solutions. Figuring out how plants can be established in altered environments needs the dedication and passion of many different people from a variety of backgrounds – our restoration community.

It is the expertise of scientists, restoration practitioners, industry partners, land managers, university researchers, students and volunteers that drive the achievement of restoration goals.

Ben Miller, Davide Abate and Lucy Commander conduct a vegetation survey of BIF vegetation community. Photo: Luis Merino-Martín

The banded ironstone restoration project’s primary partners were Sinosteel Midwest Corporation, the Botanic Gardens and Parks Authority and The University of Western Australia. There was also collaboration with the seed collection industry, horticulturalists, environmental consultants, State Government departments and other universities.

With these partners we were able to tackle the challenges of restoring this threatened plant community in an exceptional habitat in Western Australia’s arid interior.

This project has moved plant community restoration forward substantially demonstrating the successful integration of scientific theory, restoration practice and policy regulation.

Field and laboratory-based experiments on more than 79 species uncovered the best species-specific methods of restoration.

These experiments included testing seed treatments to improve seedling establishment, comparing direct seeding with tube stock plantings, evaluating topsoil seedbank dynamics and the capacity to blend topsoil with waste rock to increase topsoil coverage in restoration, constructing a controlled environment facility to investigate the effects of rainfall and topsoil/waste rock blends on seedling establishment and assessing the physical, chemical and hydrological characters of different substrates and their effect on seedling emergence.

Anthea Challis, Arielle Fontaine and Rachel Ord prepare to plant tube stock, sow seed and install an irrigation system at the experimental site at Koolanooka. Photo: Peter Golos

David Abate, Luis Merino-Martín, Lucy Commander, Ellery Mayence and a Sinosteel Midwest Corporation contractor pose in front of the partially constructed controlled environment facility. Photo: Lucy Commander

Outcomes from experimental research and practical solutions led us to develop a ‘how to’ restoration manual. This manual is a guide to planning, target setting, implementation, monitoring and maintenance needed to restore a banded ironstone Threatened Ecological Community. It provides land managers with confidence that ecosystem restoration can be achieved, and we all can ‘prevent, halt or reverse ecosystem degradation’ in our natural world.

However, the restoration puzzle of nearly one third of the species in these banded ironstone communities remains unresolved.

These plant species can be puzzling for a number of reasons, whether they are specialists, long-lived, cryptic in their function, or limited in the quantity of material that can be sourced.

Solving these puzzles requires ongoing research and possibly new technologies to figure out how they can be established as functional plants on modified landforms, such as mine waste rock dumps.

It’s only by working together as a community that we can strive to improve restoration success of this amazing, unique, biodiverse plant community.

Koolanooka Threatened Ecological Community experimental site 16 months after starting the restoration trials. Photo: Peter Golos

The stats

1 Threatened Ecological Community on banded ironstone

5 years of experimental restoration

8 field experiments installed (< 1ha)

102 species targeted for research

~1200 tube stock planted

250,000+ seeds sown

~5.5 kg/ha of seed predicted to restore 13 species from this community

30+ people involved