Long-term habitat restoration boosts forest bird richness in China

Global habitat restoration is the central strategy for reversing biodiversity loss, yet its outcomes remain poorly understood. Focusing on China, the world’s largest forestation program, we leveraged 11,688 distribution records from 705 forest bird species within a deep-learning-based species-niche model to generate the first 1 km resolution map of forest bird richness for 1976, 2005, and 2017. Our analysis revealed increased forest bird richness across 81% regions, with a 17.4% net national gain, driven by climate change (53%), expanded habitat area (16%), and crucially, enhanced forest structural complexity (11%). Looking forward, our projections indicated that continued forestation could increase average species richness by 10.17%–35.43%, with up to half of the potential gains hinging on creating structurally complex habitats, rather than merely expanding forest area. This provides the first large-scale evidence that ignoring habitat quality can halve the biodiversity return on conservation investment. Achieving the goals of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework targets, therefore, requires a shift from area-based targets to strategies that prioritize habitat quality.