Transcription Audio

Hello and welcome. Today I want to share a simple but powerful shift I’m seeing across Australia’s most successful restoration projects. The best land managers don’t start with trees. They start with water, time, and sequence. Get those right, and the structure—the plants—and the fauna that depend on that structure follow. Get them wrong, and a million seedlings won’t save you from weeds, heat, and predators mopping up any wildlife that dares to return. Here’s the mindset shift that matters. Don’t focus on the product—trees, shrubs, a photo-ready green canopy. Focus on the processes—how water moves, how pressure is managed, how the system is nudged back into function. That’s why leading teams now use AI and remote sensing to map water movement, soil moisture, and habitat structure before a single shovel hits the ground. They’re not guessing; they’re reading the landscape’s operating system. Because degradation isn’t a single symptom like “fewer trees.” It’s a web of disrupted flows. Drains, tracks, and fencelines carve lines in the landscape. They fragment habitat, yes, but perhaps more importantly, they rewire water. Those lines accelerate runoff, lock soils into dryness, amplify heat, and leave fauna without refuge even if a canopy eventually grows overhead. The places that bounce back best are the places where we treat those lines as our primary intervention points—softening or removing the features that break flow and movement, and re-stitching the landscape so water and wildlife can move the way they used to. Layer on drought, and the challenge multiplies. Long dry spells don’t just pause ecosystems; they can tip them into new states that don’t bounce back with rain alone. After the Millennium Drought, parts of the Murray–Darling Basin and the southwest woodlands shifted into persistent shrub encroachment and altered soils. Compaction increased. Organic matter dropped. Microbial communities collapsed. Even when the skies opened again, those systems stayed stuck—what ecologists call hysteresis. To get them unstuck, you have to actively change the conditions, not just wait. Fire is the other reality we can’t ignore. The Black Summer burned over 24 million hectares, and nearly three billion animals were impacted. That’s incomprehensible. But inside that tragedy is a lesson: where landscapes retained connectivity and a mosaic of fire ages, fauna recovery could happen in 12 to 18 months, not decades. Where fragmentation ruled, mortality was higher and recovery faltered. Real recovery hinges on unburnt refuges, post-fire structural diversity, and safe pathways for recolonisation. It’s connectivity, again. And a quick word on carbon. Carbon storage is real and valuable, but the accumulation rates vary widely, and many projects don’t meet early projections. If your business case rests only on carbon, you’re walking a tightrope in a crosswind. The robust projects stack benefits. They measure biodiversity outcomes, erosion control, water quality, cultural values, and climate adaptation, with carbon as one important component—just not the only one. So what actually works? In a word: sequence. The right small actions in the right order often outperform massive efforts that fight the system. And the first move, almost everywhere, is water. Reset the water first, and keep it in the landscape. Hydrology isn’t just about having water present; it’s about water behavior. Slow, infiltrating water builds soil biology, moderates temperature, and feeds deep-rooted perennials. Fast, erosive water strips nutrients and carves gullies. The difference between success and failure often comes down to changing velocity and residence time—how slowly water moves, and how long it stays. There are practical steps you can take right away. In peat swamps and floodplain depressions, block or soften drains with low-profile bunds and leaky weirs. In organic soils, rewetting doesn’t just reduce oxidation and fire risk; it revives sedges and sphagnum bogs that are lifelines for frogs and small mammals. The trick is to make it leaky—slow water without creating hard barriers that can blow out in floods. On the big flat rivers, rebuild floodplain connectivity. Reopen anabranches. Lower banks in strategic spots. In the Murray–Darling, environmental flows do their best work when they can spread onto reconnected floodplains. Think of the Macquarie Marshes: when water was delivered to those reconnected areas at the right time, breeding events for ibis, egrets, and spoonbills jumped by more than 300 percent compared to years when water stayed in-channel. It’s not just about how much water you have; it’s about timing and connection. At the paddock and sub-catchment scale, decompact and roughen hard surfaces. Create micro-catchments. Lay contour logs. This is where Natural Sequence Farming has been so compelling. In the Mulloon catchment in New South Wales, a series of small, landscape-aligned interventions held water longer, lifted productivity by around 60 percent, sustained baseflows, and improved water quality. It worked because it moved with the contours and let a thousand tiny sponges develop across the land. And work with wetlands. Take the Gayini or Nimmie-Caira country in New South Wales. Rehydration there has brought back crucial foraging habitat for waterbirds and turtles. These places reward nuance. Not a static pond, but subtle rises and falls, seasonal pulses, and careful attention to how water levels shape food webs and refuge. Once you’ve reset water, your next moves get easier and cheaper. Soil cools. Invertebrates return. Perennials re-sprout. Now your plantings can be targeted and resilient. Your weed pressure drops because the conditions no longer overwhelmingly favor opportunists. And the fauna start to come back to structure that’s grown through process, not been installed as a cosmetic fix. But water isn’t the only pressure to get right. Sequence also means addressing what eats, tramples, and hunts while recovery is fragile. Where needed, manage grazing pressure so new growth can establish. Ringbark your feral tracks—literally and figuratively—by closing or redesigning the lines in the landscape that fragment habitat. Make safe pathways for movement. And take predator risk seriously. If you create beautiful habitat without considering cats and foxes, you can inadvertently serve up a buffet. Pair habitat work with smart, humane predator management and give small mammals, reptiles, and ground-nesting birds a fighting chance. Fire planning belongs in the sequence too. Support mosaics of different fire ages, protect key refuges, and design connectivity so wildlife can reach them. Think of fire as a structural tool, not just a hazard, and use it with the humility that complex systems demand. If you’re wondering where to start on your place, here’s a simple field test: walk after the first decent rain. Watch where water speeds up and where it lingers. Find the lines carved by drains, tracks, fences, and stock pads. Those are your leverage points. Ask yourself how you can slow, spread, and sink water without creating brittle barriers. A few well-placed leaky structures can unlock a season’s worth of regeneration. And use the tech. Satellite data, drones, and machine learning aren’t gimmicks—they help you see what your boots can’t. Map soil moisture, map changes in vegetation structure, map thermal anomalies. Let those layers guide where to place interventions and how to stage them. Then keep monitoring. If you can show cooler ground temperatures, rising soil moisture, the return of water-dependent invertebrates, and safe passages between refuges, you’ve got the story—and the evidence—to bring investors, communities, and regulators with you. On the business side, stack the value. Biodiversity targets, erosion control, water quality, cultural outcomes, climate adaptation, and yes, carbon. That diversified bundle is what builds durability. It also spreads risk when rainfall is unreliable and markets shift. And it keeps you honest: you can’t tick one box and claim the job’s done. The most inspiring part of all this is that nature does most of the heavy lifting once we stop fighting her. Slow the water, remove the barriers, give it time, and the system often surprises you. I’ve seen frogs calling again from re-wet peat within a season. I’ve watched waterbirds descend on reconnected floodplains like someone flipped a switch. I’ve seen battered soils hold onto rain that used to roar off in a single afternoon. So if you’re planning your next restoration, start with the question: where does the water want to go, and how can I help it slow down and stay? Then, what pressures can I ease, and in what order, so recovery isn’t eaten, trampled, or burned before it takes root? Only then ask what needs planting and where. Sequence first, scale second. You don’t need a million trees to build a living landscape. You need a million small decisions that put process over product—water over haste, connection over convenience, time over headlines. Start with the first drop. Keep it close. Let the landscape breathe again. When you do, the plants will follow, and the fauna will find their way home. Thanks for listening, and here’s to working with nature, not against her, one careful step at a time.