ARTICLE: Identifying practitioner and researcher collaboration needs to improve ecosystem restoration in Canada

DRAGEN Lab team member Dr. Tim Alemenciak has recently published a paper in Socio-Ecological Practice Research, examines how ecological restoration practitioners and researchers can collaborate more effectively to improve restoration outcomes in Canada.

Using facilitated workshops at national restoration conferences, the study identifies three shared needs across sectors:

• improved communication (including space to share failures and lessons learned)

• better collaborative tools that support knowledge exchange

• stronger adaptive management grounded in clear, shared goals

The findings are timely in the context of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and Canada’s biodiversity commitments, and speak directly to how universities can support applied, community-engaged research with real-world impact.

Abstract:

Ecological restoration practitioners should have access to relevant science on which to base their plans, and restoration researchers should ground their science in real-world needs — but the gap between science and practice frustrates this integration. Organizations are working to bridge that gap, and practitioners and researchers want to work together, yet specifically what each group needs to effectively collaborate is less clear. We hosted two in-person workshops that brought together ecological restoration practitioners and researchers to investigate the collaboration needs of practitioners and researchers. We conducted two facilitated dialogue-based exercises at RE3 (Reclaim, Restore, Rewild) 2023 conference in Quebec City, Quebec, and two at the Society for Ecological Restoration North American Conference 2024 in Vancouver, British Columbia. We analyzed responses from both events using qualitative coding and extracted six themes (connections, engagement, targets, resources, data and uncertainty) and 23 sub-themes that informed three core needs shared by both researchers and practitioners. The first core need was communication, particularly around project experiences and failures. The second need was tools, suggesting the current landscape of collaborative platforms is insufficient. The third need was greater engagement with adaptive management and goal setting in restoration science and practice. We synthesize the findings from four collaborative exercises and identify future areas to build bridges between restoration research and practice, such as co-training workshops on funding opportunities, which could lead to co-designed actions with mutual value for researchers, practitioners and Indigenous and local communities.