CORVID CONSERVATION CORPS.

After the sheep were removed in the 1980s and acorn-eating pigs by 2006, native habitat rebounded: Santa Cruz's scrub oak increased by 50 percent, right along with what Sillett's work suggested was a 20 to 30 percent increase in jays. Now Motta, Rivera, and Bobadilla rush to follow the jays' movements with more analog tools - binoculars, rangefinder, and GPS - setting waypoints for every acorn stashed. Though the birds flew most of the seeds back toward the scrub oak, rather than farther out into the open, they hid more than 80 percent of the acorns within the burn scar. This time, they'll use chains of two platforms at each site to draw jays deeper into the scar and supplement acorns with toyon berries and islay cherries, both native shrubs that could shelter oak seedlings. [Extracted from the article]