Giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) forests are hyper-productive marine habitats, supporting diverse assemblages of fishes, invertebrates and algae while providing important cultural and socio-economic values. Driven by ocean warming and cascading effects of overfishing, extensive declines of surface-canopy giant forests in eastern Tasmania by ~95% have transformed these reefs into lower-lying simplified habitats. In this presentation, I will describe the collective mobilisation of science, industries and communities to safeguard the ~5% of forests that remain, in combination with ambitious restoration efforts to bring back forests where they’ve been entirely lost in recent decades. Mobilising the science at local-scales demands a whole-of-ecosystem approach to support giant kelp, while achieving forest-scale outcomes demands mobilisation of multiple industries, including trophic rebalance via targeted sea urchin harvests and lobster translocations to rebuild populations of this urchin predator, plus industrialising the propagation and out-planting of giant kelp sporelings and/ or gardening competing understorey seaweeds that have infilled reefs where giant kelp forests previously dominated. Mobilising communities has also been essential to establish the wherewithal to scale-up conservation efforts, including science-led development of a training program in giant kelp restoration techniques and the establishment of a novel voluntourism industry in giant kelp restoration. Scaling-up solutions to achieve increasingly efficient safeguarding and restoration methods demands diversified and novel funding approaches towards the ultimate social-ecological goal of self-sustaining forests and maximal gains in local biodiversity and spill-over production from thriving giant kelp forests.