In response to the US Fish & Wildlife Service Texas Coastal Zone Comprehensive Conservation Plan GCBO staff recently began a project on two local National Wildlife Refuges. This plan identified a need for forest bird monitoring within refuge tracts comprised of bottomland hardwood forests.  Though initial funding is for one year, the plan is to secure support for long term monitoring (10 years) for these forests that are vital to southern bird populations. Because the refuges have limited staff for field work of this kind, GCBO was contracted to initiate the first year of avian monitoring at San Bernard NWR and Trinity River NWR.  The study has several goals including: identifying species composition of the wintering and breeding birds using the refuge tracts, and accessing long term population trends of the birds of bottomland hardwoods. In the final analysis, it is hoped that with good long-term data refuges will be able to detect serious negative changes in bird populations in time to make management changes and vegetative improvements for the benefit of the birds using the bottomlands.