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Current levels of forestry expansion in boreal forests threaten to radically reduce biodiversity. For many forest-dwelling species the threat is not simply because the forest is used for biomass production, but rather how it is used. Retention forestry practices aim to limit impacts on biodiversity during the final felling stage of a forestry cycle. However, the efficiency of such methods in retaining biodiversity have rarely been studied for intermediate forestry stages (e.g., forest thinning) with experimental approaches entirely absent from boreal forests. Therefore, we conducted a before-after control-impact experiment in Sweden to investigate the short-term response in occurrence of individual bird species, guilds, and population trend groups (positive, stable, or negative population trend), as well as the response in nest box occupancy and in the reproductive success of Parus major to three different thinning treatments. The …