RESEARCH ARTICLE Demographic Effects of Habitat Restoration

Background Considerable resources are spent on habitat restoration across the globe to counter the impacts of habitat loss and degradation on wildlife populations. But, because of time and resourcing constraints onmany conservation programs, the effectiveness of these habitat res-toration programs in achieving their long-term goals of improving the population viability of par-ticular wildlife species is rarely assessed andmany restoration programs cannot demonstrate their effectiveness.Without such demonstration, and in particular demonstrating the causal relationships between habitat restoration actions and demographic responses of the target species, investments in restoration to achieve population outcomes are of uncertain value. Approach Here, we describe an approach that builds on population data collected for a threatened Australian bird – the Grey-crowned Babbler Pomatostomus temporalis- to evaluate how effectively targeted habitat restoration work improves its viability. We built upon an exten-sive historical survey by conducting surveys 13 years later at 117 sites stratified by pres