Anthropogenic activities, such as deforestation and climate change, have depleted biodiversity and ecosystem services and altered ecological functions (e.g., seed dispersal) across the tropics. Landscape-scale restoration could help to promote ecosystem function in degraded areas and ensure socio-ecological resilience. There is no single formula or a single outcome for every landscape restoration. In this symposium, we will bring speakers with a wide range of expertise to explore the latest trends on forest restoration and give a holistic point of view of restoration by exploring restoration before and after the restoration has happened. Exploring forests before and- after restoration will provide valuable insights for future research topics. This will include identifying the main gaps in our current understanding, synthesizing results across a range of methods, and ensuring that research has relevance for conservation and socio-ecological resilience. Topics that will be addressed are seed dispersal in a matrix of heterogeneous restoring landscapes, forest species that grow in degraded lands, natural regeneration predictions for its operationalization in landscape restoration, forest resilience to fire after nucleated restoration, and what happens to arthropods after forest restoration.