If you could add to your question, what high elevation ecosystem in what country, whose land (private, public), is it riparian, wetlands or uplands or a combination of the three, and what caused the damages in the ecosystem that need repairs (mining? grazing? logging?) and who is interested in funding the repairs?

And, would there be an annual budget available until completed? And what kind of land scale in hectares (tens? hundreds? hundreds of thousands?) And, is anyone thinking about getting a license from a company for Ecological Restoration methods that would consistently work--instead of trying to invent any successful methods yourself from scratch, as you question is suggesting is needed?

And do you have any expectation of rapid performance standards, and what are they?

I have seen project here our Western US grasslands, unable to get a single hectare to be restored, even after 30 and 40 years of work, and in two cases, $450,000 was spent on one hectare at https://www.ecoseeds.com/road.test.html and in another case $2,900,000 spent on eight test plots done by 100 students from four universities, that all failed at https://www.ecoseeds.com/2.9million.html

That is why you need to start, either have the funding to be able to invent your own successful restoration methods that have very rapid performance standards, or license those methods from someone else who has already invented them.

Picture from the one-hectare failure costing $450,000

So, to answer your question--

What is the most important issue with any Ecological Restoration, is you learn how to set up your test plots so you can invent those successful methods yourself, because each site and each ecosystem is a little different.

These are the methods that have allowed me to restore 800 acres back to 95%-100% native cover, and when I am doing that by seeding, able to do get that done in only six months.

There are constants that you need to try and follow:

1.) Always use local ecotype native seeds. You will need to determine what that means for each project--how far can you take a seed and transfer it to another location in distance and elevation. See my work on ecotypes at https://www.ecoseeds.com/juicy.gossip.three.html

2.) Never use exotics, and that includes natives whose origins are too far away from the site you are working on.

3.) Never sow seed mixes, because the seedlings will fight each other. Sow your seeds as a mosaic instead.

4.) ALWAYS do in-situ test plots for each project, testing different species and different sowing rates and different methods, and with each test plot treatment only one by two meters. If your seeds and/or methods dod not work on two square meters, it is not going to work on a larger scale. And if this will be a seeding project, keep doing your test plots, until you can get 95-100% native cover in six months or less.

I set up a test plot where the weed, yellow star thistle in October plants were growing at the rate of 1,000 plants per square meter, and now 90 days later, those thistles are 99.9% gone.

5.) Extremely important to set up Ex-situ test plots. By taking soil from the restoration site an putting it in boxes about 10 cm deep and 30 cm wide x 60 cm long, and copy your in-situ test plots where you can water those boxes daily. And always have a control where you just put the soil in and sow nothing. So many failures in Ecological Restoration are blamed on the weather or lack of rain, instead of blaming the methods. By copying each of your in-situ plots, in the ex-situ boxes, you can eliminate weather and lack of rain, and it will be much easier to discover the real reasons for failures.

6.) Check and see if there are seed eater in the environment, before you do your sowing, even of your small test plots. Use a cupcake tin and put a different seed that you are going to sow, and clear a circle about a meter in diameter and put the cupcake tin in the middle with the edge of the tin flush with the ground, and see if there are rodents, birds or ants that come and eat your seeds. If so, then find a method to hide those seeds.

My own project shown above, was a 160 kilometer gas pipeline planting north of Reno in the 1990s, where we found that out first test plot planting was completely dug up by rodents, so we did the cupcake tin method to find out how severe the problem was, and then had to find a method to hide those seeds. Saw another project in the Mojave desert, where the harvester ants completely dug up a 10 acre planting.

Once we got our test plots to produce 100% native cover in six months, we copied those methods, to get the whole 160 km. to do the same. And today 30 years later the planting is still 95% native cover.

Thanks for your reply, your experience is very valuable. My work is related to the restoration of high mountain ecosystems. Compensatory transplantation of Rhododendron aureum Georgi, in the north of the Trans-Baikal Territory, Russia. The work was carried out in 2 stages, 960 individuals of this species were transplanted. The results of the work will form the basis of my dissertation work.

Article Compensatory transplantation (Rhododendron aureum Georgi) as...

I read your report's conclusion-- how long now have hose transplants have been in the ground and what is the survival rate? Also I did not see any soil tests, to confirm you were transplanting into a soil nutrient level, Ph and percentage organic matter content, that closely mimics where the plants were originally were from?

The transplantation was carried out in two stages in 2019 and 2020. The survival rate is about 90%, continued monitoring of work. Plantings were carried out in rows, the inter-row space has a higher projective cover (of associated species) than disturbed areas without restoration measures. Soil samples were taken both at the sampling site and at the planting site and have similar characteristics (ionic composition and pH of soil water extract). The data obtained will be included in the dissertation work, the defense of which is planned for next year.

It would be useful to add in your report, the soil tests of both sites, and a distribution of the age classes that you transplanted, maybe based on plant height and main stem diameter or some other criteria.

So for your future work in Ecological restoration, do my previous two answers give you some ideas on how to make your future seeding projects more successful? If so, you could recommend them?

Try some native grassland restoration and include a lot of wildflowers. Your country is going to need hundreds of millions of hectares of that kind of restoration in the next decade, so your country can start producing carbon offsets, so that your oil and gas industry can sell Carbon Neutral Fossil Fuel products to the rest of the world.

Similar to what the Saudis just put together with 24 other countries, to plant between one and five million trees per WEEK, until all 50 BILLION are planted, for those trees to sequester carbon and make carbon offsets to help fix Global Warming. See their You Tube video for their "Middle East Green Initiative" they put together at COP27 in November at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QO8PcbxOu0Y

This Ecological Restoration is the only method that we will be able to reverse Global Warming, by having all of the coal, gas and oil that is sold and burned, to be already Carbon Neutral by planting native plants to put that carbon back into the soil before it is even burned.

You are starting a career in Ecological Restoration that could save us all, and consider expanding your work to make that happen quickly.