In 2005, researchers from four Australian universities and CSIRO joined forces with environmental managers from three state agencies and six regional catchment
management authorities to answer the question: Can we detect the influence of public environmental programs on the condition of our natural resources?
This was prompted by a series of national audits of Australias environmental programs that could find no evidence of improvement in the condition of waterways, soils and native vegetation despite major public programs which had invested more than $4.2 billion in environmental repair and management over the last 20 years. Landscape Logic describes how this collaboration of 42 researchers and environmental managers went about the research. It describes what they found and what they learned about the challenge of attributing
cause to environmental change.