Doors: 5:00pm     Lecture: 6:00pm

FREE

This event is completely free to attend! If you find value in tonight’s lecture, we warmly encourage you to make a donation at the end. Your generosity helps us continue bringing these experiences to the community.

Seating is first-come, first-served. Register here!

Wild In Seattle | David B. Williams

Join us for a fascinating evening with Adrian Wolf, Stewardship Director at Great Peninsula Conservancy and a lead member of the innovative Listen Up Collaborative, a regional partnership using cutting-edge acoustic monitoring and A.I. to understand the health of Western Washington’s forests.

Adrian’s work—recently spotlighted in national environmental coverage—centers on a simple but powerful idea: birds are some of our most insightful ecological storytellers. By installing small audio monitors across more than 4,500 acres of protected lands, Adrian and his collaborators have collected hundreds of thousands of bird recordings that reveal how forest restoration efforts are working in real time. These recordings are analyzed with artificial intelligence to identify species such as the Pacific wren, spotted towhee, and chestnut‑backed chickadee, providing a data-rich understanding of habitat recovery.

This collaborative effort—uniting land trusts, tribal partners, and county parks—has grown into a model for climate‑resilient conservation. Through practices like selective thinning, brush management, and the creation of habitat features like snags and brush piles, the team is restoring ecological structure across diverse landscapes, from floodplains to former timberlands. Their acoustic monitoring allows them to measure whether wildlife is truly benefiting from these interventions, replacing anecdotal observations with precise long‑term data.

In this talk, Adrian will take us inside the science and the stories behind this work—what birds are telling us about our forests, why their “nature’s Yelp reviews” matter for conservation planning, and how new technologies are helping land stewards respond to climate change with greater accuracy and care.

Whether you’re a birder, a climate‑curious learner, or someone who simply loves the natural world, this program offers a compelling look at how listening deeply to birds can shape the future of forest restoration in the Pacific Northwest.

This event is brought to you from the Seward Park Audubon Center