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Reforesting for the Rare: How Trees Helped Save the Kirtland’s Warbler
Restoring jack pine forests helped bring one of North America’s rarest songbirds back.
October 29, 2025
Every species has a role to play — but some can only thrive in the rarest habitats. The Kirtland’s warbler depends on young jack pine forests and nearly vanished when those trees did. Reforestation gave both the bird and its forest a second chance.
When it comes to biodiversity, every tree tells a story — and some sing, like the comeback of the Kirtland’s warbler, a small gray-and-yellow songbird once teetering on the edge of extinction.
Nowhere Left to Nest
The Kirtland’s warbler is one of the rarest songbirds in North America, and one of the pickiest. It nests only in young jack pine forests between 5 and 20 years old, mostly in Michigan, with a few breeding grounds extending into Wisconsin and Ontario.
For much of the past century, those habitats became scarce. Fire suppression and timber practices that favored mature trees disrupted the natural regeneration cycle that once sustained these forests. Without young jack pines, the warbler’s nesting grounds all but disappeared — and so did the birds. By the 1970s, fewer than 200 singing males remained, and the bird spent nearly 50 years on the Endangered Species List.
Photo Credit: Flickr | Joel Trick, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
A Forest Reborn
Saving the Kirtland’s warbler meant recreating the natural rhythm of fire and regrowth that once sustained its habitat. That required an ambitious, long-term reforestation effort — one that continues today.
“Reforestation positively impacts wildlife in a number of ways,” says Jason Hartman, silviculturist with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. “One of the ways is that it creates different age classes. So you have some jack pine trees that are 10 years old, some that are 20 years old, or 50 or 80. That creates different habitat for a different suite of species.”
Among those species is the iconic Kirtland’s warbler. “We plant around 1.5 million jack pine every year for the Kirtland’s warbler,” Hartman said. “The partnership with the Arbor Day Foundation is one of the things that helps us achieve this significant volume of seedlings. It’s definitely a success story.”
These forests aren’t just replanted — they’re designed to mimic the effects of natural wildfire. “The species really likes large, disturbed areas and homogenous landscapes that replicate past wildfires,” says Hartman. “We trench on an opposing wave pattern, creating openings between thickets of jack pine — exactly the kind of structure the Kirtland’s warbler prefers.”
A Shared Success, and a Continuing Commitment
Public, private, and nonprofit partners have come together to replant and manage more than 210,000 acres of jack pine habitat, recreating the forest mosaic this rare bird depends on. Between 2018 and 2025, the Arbor Day Foundation planted more than 33 million trees with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources to restore not only the warbler’s nesting grounds, but the health of the broader ecosystem around them.
Today, the Kirtland’s warbler population exceeds 2,300 breeding pairs — more than double the recovery threshold. And in 2019, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officially removed the species from the Endangered Species List, making it the first songbird ever to be delisted due to successful recovery efforts. Still, conservation is never finished. The warbler’s survival depends on continued habitat management and reforestation to ensure young jack pine forests remain part of Michigan’s landscape for generations to come.
The Kirtland’s warbler’s recovery shows what’s possible when we give nature the tools to heal itself. Reforestation rebuilds ecosystems from the ground up — strengthening biodiversity, restoring balance, and ensuring life continues for generations to come.
