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Increasingly, regional conservation plans are using information about how animals respond to changes in habitat characteristics to provide guidelines for management. However, the ability of these plans to effectively guide management remains largely untested. To test a regional bird conservation plan developed by Partners in Flight, we compared bird abundance in untreated stands to that of stands where shrub cover had been reduced to lower the risk of fire. We used these data to evaluate whether birds identified as focal species in the conservation plan increased or decreased in abundance as a result of the treatments. Over a two-year period, two of 12 Partners in Flight oak woodland and chaparral focal species were more abundant at treated units in both years; no species were consistently less abundant at treated units in both years. These results suggest small-scale (7–42ha) treatments are consistent with …