Passive acoustic monitoring is a cost‐effective approach to conduct inland surveys for marbled murrelets

Abstract The marbled murrelet ( Brachyramphus marmoratus ) is a seabird of conservation concern that nests in late‐successional, old‐growth forests in Oregon, Washington, and California, USA. Traditional audio‐visual surveys have been the standard method for detecting murrelets in forests. Given that murrelets can be extremely cryptic in forest environments, audio‐visual surveys are difficult, time consuming, and expensive to conduct. Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) may be a useful and cost‐effective alternative. Using a paired murrelet survey design, we compared detection probabilities across 88 survey points in forests of Oregon and Washington. We conducted 2–4 early morning audio‐visual surveys and 13–53‐day PAM surveys from 14 June through 5 August 2022 and 2023, when murrelets typically make the most frequent inland flights during the nesting season. We found the average detection probability for murrelets on any given day was higher for an audio‐visual survey visit (0.40, SD = 0.17) than for a PAM survey day (0.19, SD = 0.10). However, the cumulative detection probability for PAM surveys was 0.98 (95% CI = 0.96–1.0) after 19 survey days, whereas the same cumulative detection probability would require 9 audio‐visual survey visits. Using simulations to compare the cost‐effectiveness of both methods, we found audio‐visual surveys cost more when compared with PAM surveys in 61–91% of scenarios because they require specialized personnel training and additional pre‐dawn visits. Further, PAM per survey costs decreased as the number of survey days per point increased and over time after initial costs were incurred, particularly when autonomous recording units were reused for multiple years. While audio‐visual surveys are the standard method for murrelet surveys in forest habitats, PAM represents a more cost‐effective approach to determine the presence of murrelets.