Prof. Sean Connell1, Dr Dominic McAfee1
1The University Of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia, 2The University Of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia
Decisions to rewild extinct habitats is a major undertaking that carries biological risk and social risk, both affecting government decision-making. South Australia is restoring extinct oyster reefs (kilometre-long ribbon-reefs) as well as restore seagrass beds (>5000 hectare recovery), kelp-forests and a crashed fishery.
Our search for science-solutions has necessarily been interdisciplinary because of the need to focus on the connection between nature and emerging-technologies, conservation-psychology, reducing government-risk and facilitating legal-reform.
Ecologically, I will discuss how we have used technology (acoustic technology) to dampen the effects of environmental uncertainty (recruitment dynamics), a most notorious characteristic of ecological systems that once paralysed policy-makers. I will show how this ecological researched engages with conservation-optimism (psychology) to acquire support from the community (continuous live broadcasting of experiments to YouTube) to improve environmental education (formal high school curriculum) and accelerate community appetite for rewilding.
Together, this socio-ecological research has not only supported rewilding to such a level that we have boosted scientific confidence, but we have also boosted political confidence for restoration. Whilst the work began with ecological assessments that focused on the capacity of a system to naturally contribute to recovery (i.e. resilience), we show that we can transform efforts of intervention to a completely new mode of operation ecologically, socially, politically and legally.
Biography:
Sean Connell and Dom McAfee pioneered Australia’s landscape-scale restoration of oyster reefs with the creation of a ribbon-reef of >1 kilometre long. This reef represents one of the largest restorations of an extinct ecosystem in the world. Their research has sparked another 4 reefs and an expansion to include seagrasses, kelp forests and abalone. Sean’s work combines historical ecology with experimental ecology in collaboration with experts in the humanities to reduce policy-risks and improve government legitimacy in conservation. This work is notable because it has created a new culture for policy-makers in coastal conservation.
