ABSTRACT The rapid decline of freshwater ecosystems has prompted significant investment in riparian restoration globally. Demonstrating positive ecological outcomes from this investment requires adequate monitoring against stated objectives. This study aimed to assess whether ecological outcomes were achieved for revegetation projects undertaken between 2006 and 2023 in the Canning River catchment, Western Australia. To achieve this, we systematically reviewed the funding applications and project reporting for 64 riparian revegetation projects that represented a AUD3. 5 million investment to determine: (1) if the ecological objectives of projects were met, (2) how grant funders can improve the collection and reporting of adequate monitoring data, and (3) if longer‐term outcomes could be determined using a remote sensing method. Of the 64 projects assessed, 20 did not have final reports or acquittals. We found there was insufficient monitoring data to evaluate whether projects met ecological objectives of the application or the funding program. A major limiting factor was that most projects were funded for a short duration (12 months) which is insufficient to collect monitoring data and evaluate project outcomes. We identified a range of barriers to adequate collection and reporting of monitoring data, including that 22% of projects did not require applicants to describe a monitoring or data analysis approach, and that of the 75% of projects that did collect data, none could be used to quantitatively assess ecological objectives. We found that remote sensing was limited in its usefulness as a low‐cost rapid assessment tool because the spatial analysis required extensive manual correction using specialised expertise to process and analyse the data. We recommend that future restoration programs require proponents include SMART (i. e. , S pecific, M easurable, A chievable, R elevant and T ime‐bound) objectives, a clear description of the methods and analysis of data to reflect the objectives, and the use of standardised monitoring methods and collection of baseline data. Quantitative monitoring is a central part of adaptive management and therefore requires adequate time and resourcing.
Freestone et al. (Thu,) studied this question.