Over the past 50 years, Alcoa of Australia has invested in long-term environmental research to inform mine rehabilitation across its bauxite operations in southwest Western Australia. This paper reflects on how rehabilitation science and practice have evolved over time, driven by improved ecological understanding, operational learning, and changing societal expectations. 

Expectations for post mining land use and rehabilitation outcomes have also shifted, often involving trade-offs between objectives such as timber production and biodiversity conservation, as well as complexities surrounding water catchment protection and recreational access, particularly with host communities and a major metropolitan area nearby. As these priorities have evolved, so too have rehabilitation approaches, completion criteria, and monitoring frameworks. 

In recent years, rehabilitation performance has attracted increased public scrutiny. This scrutiny is often shaped by misinterpretation of legacy rehabilitation, limited communication of evolving practices, and perceptions of inconsistency as research outputs and methods have changed over time. Public expectations of rehabilitation outcomes may not always align with agreed regulatory commitments or with what is realistically achievable in complex forest ecosystems. Importantly, older rehabilitation should be interpreted in the context of the standards, land use objectives, and scientific knowledge that applied at the time of establishment, rather than assessed through contemporary lenses alone. 

The paper emphasises the need for transparent, reproducible, and context aware approaches to describing rehabilitation outcomes, focusing on progress along recovery trajectories rather than binary judgements. It also outlines Alcoa’s applied, co-designed research model, in which site‑based practitioners and multidisciplinary scientific collaborators work together to address knowledge gaps, improve decision-making, and support continual improvement in future rehabilitation outcomes.