Habitat provision is a major driver of native bird communities in restored urban forests

We evaluated restoration success by investigating changes in native bird communities along a restoration chronosequence of 25 restored urban forests in New Zealand representing 72 years of forest development, which we compared to two target reference systems and a control system. We used structural equation modelling (SEM) to investigate the relative influence of forest structure (complexity index, tree height, canopy openness, basal area, species richness, density), landscape attributes (patch area, perimeter length, landscape composition within three buffer zones, distance to the nearest road and water source) and invasive mammalian predator indices of relative abundance on total species richness and relative abundance of native forest birds.