An Approach to defining and achieving restoration targets for a threatened plant community

Connecting scientific research and government policy is essential for sustaining biodiversity conservation and the economy. Our approach to connect theoretical ecology, applied ecology and policy was devised using principles of restoration ecology and the requisite methodology to restore biodiverse ecosystems. Using a Threatened Ecological Community with >120 plant species, we posit our approach as a guide for interpreting and achieving regulatory compliance (i.e. Government conditions) enacted to manage or offset environmental impacts of development. This data set contains the results for scale-appropriate target setting (AIM 1); method of return (AIM 2); and precursory achievement of ≥70% target species richness (AIM 4 – working example only).