Development of a marine restoration roadmap for Tasmania: A case study using East Coast Giant Kelp forest communities

The large-scale deterioration of natural ecosystems in the past century now demands active efforts to restore damaged ecosystems to ensure the continuing provision of ecosystem services. While restoration practice is well established in terrestrial systems – namely forforests – marine ecosystem restoration has lagged. However, interest for marine and coastal ecosystem restoration is increasing globally and in Australia.

Central to the success of restoration efforts is the systematic selection of suitable sites underpinned by a robust and transparent decision-support framework. However, this has so far been a scarce topic of research. Site selection should consider the local environmental,socio-economic, and governance context to maximize benefits for communities and enhance ecosystem services, while minimizing conflict.

The objective of this report is to support the development of a marine ecosystem restorationroadmap in Tasmania initiated by Natural Resource Management South (NRM South) as partof the Tasmanian Sustainable Seafood Partnership. Several Tasmanian marine ecosystemscould benefit from restoration efforts, including oyster, seagrass, and kelp beds. As a casestudy, this report focuses on the restoration of the iconic giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) communities in Tasmanian Coastal Waters to identify key aspects to consider whendeveloping a restoration roadmap. Despite this focus, we aim to whenever possible generalizefindings for these aspects to be applied to other marine ecosystems as needed.