Get reliable rangeland science

European rabbits are thought to have colonised most of Australia's vast rangelands by about 1910, leaving destitute pastoralists, decreased livestock production and a degraded environment in their wake, resulting in an-going need to manage and rehabilitate these critical environments. At a broadscale, rabbit control has been implemented, with varying degrees of success, using a variety of biocontrol agents most notably myxomatosis in the 1950's and more recently rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus. Native perennial vegetation still shows these recruitment pulses due to a modern awareness that seedling survival tolerances of palatable species can be as little as one rabbit/ km2. Such low rabbit density was achieved with initial impacts of the viral biocontrols, and where land managers have undertaken landscape scale warren destruction. Utilising GPS mapping of rabbit warrens we mapped the native vegetation recruitment following destruction of approximately 28,000 warrens by a bulldozer with long ripping tines at Thackaringa Station in western NSW. Using the r emote ly sensed Normali sed Difference Moisture Index on the 22,5 45 ripped and GPS-mapped warrens at Thackaringa has detected a differential recovery trend in areas where rabbits have been eradicated. Based on this initial analysis, it suggests that the potential benefits for landscape-scale restoration of native vegetation, ecological recovery, pastoralism and potential carbon storage may be appreciable. However, satellite sensors are optimised for vegetation that is not the dominant signal for the Australian geographies, necessitating the exploration of tailored analysis methods to address the unique complexities of Australia's diverse ecosystems.