2025 Conservation Ranching Bird Monitoring Results in the Rockies

Audubon Rockies and the team of wildlife biologists from Precision Wildlife Resources completed this year’s avian monitoring, spanning 545,000 acres across 13 Audubon Certified Bird-Friendly ranches. With over 6,000 miles travelled by this amazing team of scientists, there were very few roads not driven!  

Vegetation sampling and bird surveys were conducted between mid-May to early July across certified ranches in Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. Favorable weather then followed throughout the spring and summer, and made travel between survey locations efficient and the fieldwork especially rewarding in 2025.   

Birds were counted at 634 survey locations representing fourteen primary habitats, ranging from open grassland and sagebrush-steppe rangelands to pinyon-juniper woodlands. A total of 129 bird species and over 11,000 individual birds were documented. Grassland and rangeland bird detections were among the most prevalent, with species such as the Western Meadowlark, Lark Bunting, Brewer’s Sparrow, Vesper Sparrow, Cassin’s Sparrow, and Grasshopper Sparrow composing five of the 10 most recorded species. Although we did not see a Yellow-bellied Flycatcher, Grace’s Warbler, or a Crested Caracara this year like some other lucky folks in Wyoming, unique species that were identified included Pinyon Jay, Black-throated Grey Warbler, Burrowing Owl and sage-grouse.  

Clearly, the ranches enrolled in the Audubon Conservation Ranching Program serve as a bastion of hope and resources for ongoing and future conservation of these species, in addition to the multitude of other niche species that were recorded in 2025 and in years prior.  This long-term monitoring dataset is integral to evaluating and continuing to implement effective management strategies on these lands. With these science-based management decisions, avian populations can continue to benefit from concerted stewardship of the lands’ ecological richness.  

Every year, Audubon Rockies and Precision Wildlife Resources offer free trainings to staff and volunteers to learn about the comprehensive Integrated Monitoring in Bird Conservation Regions (IMBCR) protocols that are the backbone of these surveys. To learn more, reach out to Audubon Rockies Conservation Ranching Director Dusty Downey at dusty.downey@audubon.org.