Environmental conditions (rainfall) will have a massive impact on survival rates here, so much so it blows my mind that the entire industry doesn’t mobilise around the rain systems like La Nina and Indian dipole.
You can lose species (including the massive nursery effort/footprint) and increase replanting in the dry or just work around the rain with some light maintenance. I think the busywork keeps planting going each year rather than rapid gluts of planting around conditions. It’s a waste of resources but it is what it is. We have just had record dry conditions and high temps and our company did quite a number of plantings because “grants need to be acquitted”. It’s so dumb. Planting into dust is demoralising.
For reference, my planting since the damaging floods is at 98% survival. The floods removing a significant amount but it’s still only about 4% at planting completion. At the time, it was like 85% of 100 plants.