Forest Park restoration boosts native bird diversity
SkimNews Take
When a zoo's scientific staff applies its expertise to habitat work beyond its gates through a nonprofit partner, the arrangement functions as institutional leverage—amplifying small-site conservation capacity into city-scale ecological gains.
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- Forest Park habitat restoration drove a net increase in native bird biodiversity, according to research in Ecological Applications that compared historical survey data (1997, 2007–2012) with new fieldwork conducted in 2023 and 2024.
- Stella Uiterwaal, an ecologist now at the Smithsonian, led the study as first author, having started the project as a postdoctoral scholar with the Living Earth Collaborative at Washington University in St. Louis.
- Open water access—Forest Park's ponds and creeks—was the single most important restoration factor for boosting bird diversity, with Uiterwaal explaining that water features pull in distinct bird groups.
- The findings predate the May 2025 tornado that caused severe damage across the St. Louis region, but the authors said they remain confident in Forest Park's resilience and in the broader result that urban restoration can lift native biodiversity.
- Sharon Deem, director of the Saint Louis Zoo's Institute for Conservation Medicine, framed the study as a counterweight to a separate 2026 analysis documenting native bird declines in North America tied to land fragmentation and agricultural degradation.
- Stephen Blake of Saint Louis University said the results should encourage continued investment in Forest Park and in urban habitat restoration more generally, while co-author Jamie Palmer also contributed from the Zoo.
Why it matters: Urban park managers now have a 14-year, pre-storm dataset showing restoration works—and a specific lever (open water) to pull. That evidence arrives as co-author Deem cites a separate 2026 study documenting native bird declines driven by land fragmentation and agriculture, making the Forest Park playbook directly relevant to cities looking to expand metro wildlife habitat.
