The united states forest service international programs and trade will fund american bird conservancy personnel, workshop expenses, and monitoring framework that demonstrate how to sustainably…

The Department of Agriculture Forest Service Washington Office Acquisitions awarded American Bird Conservancy $109,534 on September 17, 2025, under the International Forestry Programs (CFDA 10.684) to fund personnel, workshop expenses, and a monitoring framework demonstrating sustainable forest management across federal, state, and private lands.

The award supports implementation of the BirdsPLUS program, which uses bird populations as ecological health indicators to measure conservation investment impact and validate landscape management practices. American Bird Conservancy will expand the BirdsPLUS methodology across working forests, formalize a sustainability framework, and build out the validation dataset underlying the BirdsPLUS Index to enable companies to measure and report their impact on birds and nature. The organization will share BirdsPLUS findings with international partners engaged in migratory bird conservation in Latin America, supporting efforts to engage private agricultural and timber sectors internationally in practices that align conservation and industry profitability.

Performance spans the United States through August 31, 2027. The International Forestry Programs category funding this award supports conservation of U.S. migratory species habitat through partnerships across the migratory range to improve species survival and chances of returning to U.S. forests and grasslands in healthy numbers.

The united states forest service international programs and trade will fund american bird conservancy personnel, workshop expenses, and monitoring framework that demonstrate how to sustainably manage federal, state, and private forests. Work will focus on the implementation of the birdsplus program which supports projects that are good for nature and profitable for local people and generate financial returns for investors. The program uses birds as a convenient, efficient, and cost-effective measure of ecological health since they are relatively easy to survey and return more quickly to landscapes under restoration, and can be indicators of overall variety and abundance of species in a landscape. The monitoring information helps provide intuitive and invaluable measures of conservation investment impact. The data is then applied management practices on the landscape with changes in bird populations and, critically, put a value on investing in practices that will restore birds and benefit nature. Work will promote animal welfare and facilitate the presidents executive order on immediate expansion of american timber production, proving that logging supports both conservation and industry. American bird conservancy will share findings of the birdsplus methodology and application to landscapes with its international partners that work to conserve migratory bird species that split their time between the united states and latin america. This will support american bird conservancy and partners work to engage the private agricultural and timber sectors internationally.