Mine site restoration, involving the re-establishment of original
ecosystems, is a far greater challenge than revegetation, which simply
aims to stabilise the site and to give it a green appearance. One of the
challenges is to establish a simple yet effective measure of restoration
success. A potentially useful approach is to focus on particular groups of
plants or animals which are likely to provide a general indication of the
state of the ecosystem in which they occur. Ants have been used
extensively by the mining industry in this context, particularly in northern
Australia. Ants are likely to be useful bioindicators because of their
general importance in the Australian environment, and because of the
many linkages they have with other parts of the ecosystem. Moreover,
ant community structure responds to stress and disturbance in predictable
ways, and therefore provides an interpretable measure of ecosystem
change. This is illustrated by a study of ant recolonisation at Ranger
uranium mine. However, the extent to which ants reflect the responses of
other ecosystem components is poorly documented. This is currently the
subject of a collaborative project between OSS and CSIRO.