Susan Lawrence

And then I've gone off, done other things, come back and now I'm more involved now in identifying key areas and trying to work out how we can keep forest regenerating into something very successful as an ecosystem.

So right now we plant from grass to forest and it looks great and it makes a big difference.

But long term, if we really want it to replicate a rainforest, then we may need other interventions at different periods.

Yes, fungi and insects, I think are really important.

We focus so much on the trees growing up, but we're not really focusing on what's happening underneath.

And a lot of the carbon that's going down is really just in roots and leaves that are falling, but there's no timber.

And we need that timber to be recycling down in the soils to build up the soils and to build up the resilience of the ecosystem.

So yes, I'm very interested in insects, termites of all things now.

I've got one, a student working on termites.

And fungi, I would love to work more on fungi, but it's kind of a, it's a bit of a tough nut to crack.

Well, we have Miyawaki here as well in North Queensland.

Not so much with the schools that I know about, but it is a very fascinating approach to how do restoration and it's really focused on the below ground, developing that below ground.

And one of the things that we notice with restoration is that not all sites restore at the same rate.

There's always that legacy of past land use which can affect how forests recover.

And I think the Miyawaki focus on below ground is a really important idea in how we can focus on the below ground in making sure that the plants have those resources to grow well.

The Amazon's an amazing place to be working.

Everywhere you look, there's...

undiscovered things and lots to do but it does also give you a perspective of how important in Australia because we have so little forest so how important it is because it supports so much of our biodiversity terrestrially in the country and it's extremely important for us both as an ecosystem but to our community so I think it's given me perspective that we have to protect what's special here because Australia was once like the Amazon.

We were once covered by rainforests the size of the Amazon today and we now only have these very small tracts remaining that are really precious.

A lot of our rainforest is Gondwanan, particularly the uplands.