What do birds think of forest management?

"Adrian Wolf is not studying just one bird, not anymore. He manages forests in western Washington state. He is stewardship director for the Great Peninsula Conservancy, and he relies on bird sounds to measure his work. He thinks of it like the birds are leaving reviews. WOLF: This habitat is good. I'm going to keep coming back here, and I'm going to keep reading. That's the best yelp review you can have is you come back."

"More bird calls can mean more birds are moving into the forest, and that is important because Wolf says birds, in general, they're struggling. WOLF: They're having a hard time. Yeah, we've lost about 3 billion birds since 1970. And in the western forests alone, we've lost about a billion birds. SUMMERS: That has to do with a lot of factors, but a big one is habitat loss. So Wolf often works to thin out former timber forests and introduce diverse plant life."

"And that is where Avian Yelp comes in. Wolf and the Great Peninsula Conservancy started a pilot program back in 2022 to attach small audio recorders to trees. This was with a grant from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The program has since expanded to 100 sites across Washington state. It's partnered with other land trusts and tribes and is now called the Listen Up Collaborative."

Stewardship staff in western Washington attach small audio recorders to trees to monitor bird presence and gauge forest recovery. A 2022 pilot expanded to about 100 sites with partnerships among land trusts and tribes under the Listen Up Collaborative. The project listens for 45 target species and treats repeated vocal detections as indicators of suitable habitat and returning populations. Large long-term bird declines—about 3 billion since 1970, including roughly one billion in western forests—motivate habitat interventions. Managers thin former timber stands and restore diverse plant communities to improve conditions for birds and measure outcomes acoustically.

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