Evaluating Ecological Restoration Through Natural Regeneration Requires Replicated Landscape-Scale Monitoring Studies

Recent high-profile remote-sensing-based studies have shown the potential of natural regeneration for tropical forest restoration (Bousfield and Edwards 2025; Brancalion et al. 2019; Williams et al. 2024). However, as Prach and Walker (2025) pointed out, such analyses demonstrate recovery of forest cover but not of biodiversity. We agree that, while natural regeneration is often a cost-effective approach to restoring tropical forests, it may not lead to species compositions similar to oldgrowth forests (OGF). Recent pan-tropical syntheses of chronosequence studies have shown strong variation in local-scale recovery of biodiversity across regions, reflecting differences in climate, soils, land-use history, and landscape contexts (Poorter et al. 2021). However, restoration success ultimately depends on the restoration and persistence of plant communities at the landscape—not the local-scale.