Starting in 2019, the Firebird project has worked to understand the impacts of prescribed fire on three bird species of conservation concern in high marsh systems along the northern Gulf Coast. To start, we convened scientists and end users to identify key uncertainties that, if addressed, will improve management decisions and outcomes. We then created the first US Gulf Coast-wide map of high marsh habitats, assessed whether atmospheric circulation patterns have changed over the past several decades to impede our ability to use prescribed fire, and collected data across all 5 US Gulf Coast states for mottled duck, eastern black rail, and yellow rail during the breeding and non-breeding seasons. Bird and vegetation data were brought together through an adaptive management process to create a Bayes Net that predicts the impact of fire return interval, along with vegetation characteristics, on the occupancy of mottled ducks and black and yellow rails during the breeding season. Prescribed fire is a management action where the response of the vegetation and other habitat characteristics are time and species dependent. We worked with end users to identify additional questions around microtopography of these high marsh wetlands. This information will be used to guide future efforts of data collection and analysis planning for four more years of data collection in Louisiana, Texas, and Florida from 2026-2030. Our project will include >10-year time series of the response of our priority bird species and their habitat to different intervals of non-growing season prescribed fire. This presentation will emphasize the processes we went through to incorporate the input of end users, decision makers, and biologists throughout the current project and the one about to begin. We will also highlight lessons learned for identifying new key areas of uncertainty to inform our second five-year phase.