Audubon California's Bill Monahan has a piece in Grist this morning talking about how his own research has shown that we can make a tremendous difference for birds if we take aggressive action to lower global greenhouse emissions:

... while the consequences of inaction are still great, we have a startling amount of power to lessen the impacts of global warming on our wildlife and natural landscapes. While climate change could cause significant range declines in up to a third of California’s birds, these impacts can be greatly lessened for many species if we take immediate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Monahan also notes that advances in GIS modeling have given us a new and exciting ways to make use of old-fashioned citizen science, particularly the Audubon Christmas Bird Count.