Backyard Wildlife Primer
(Page 3 of 14)
September/October 1986
By Raymond Zoanetti and the Mother Earth News editors
In any case, remember: Providing quality breeding habitat is the primary objective of wildlife management. Furnishing food and other comforts is important, but your main goal should be to create a stable, secure place in which wildlife can live and propagate.
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Getting Started
Before you can decide what to do to make your property more useful to wildlife, you'll need to take a good look at it as it is now. Your analysis can be as casual as taking an extended stroll around your yard and mentally noting its significant features. A more useful approach, though, is to make a map on which you can record your observations and plan improvements. Start by drawing a sketch of your lot's borders; then add in all the nonbiological elements on your property: your house, roads, fences, garden, patio and recreation areas, streams — anything, except vegetation, that takes up space on your land. This is your "base map." You'll probably want to make several copies, so that you can record different kinds of information on separate maps.
Now examine and map your land for the following:
* Existing vegetation. Using a field guide for help, identify as many of your trees, shrubs, flowers, grasses, and other plants as possible. Draw in their positions on your map, and make a list of common names and/or genus and species keyed to the map. A less exacting approach — but one that may be more practical — is to simply note the various vegetational zones on your property and outline those areas on your map, adding an appropriate description: wetland thicket, dense conifers, mixed deciduous hardwoods with shrub understory, etc. Or you can combine the two approaches by specifically identifying some of the more prominent trees and plants, and then noting general zones as well.
* Distinct environments. Since different types of plants and animals favor different kinds of living conditions, it's useful to delineate any distinct environmental zones on your land. By observing not only the types of vegetation but also the characteristic soil, climatic, and other environmental conditions in which each is growing, you'll gain valuable clues about which types of trees and shrubs would be best to plant in each area, and about the kinds of animals that you're likely to be able to attract.
Surrounding land use. This is an especially important factor if you have little land of your own, since many species of wildlife require territories of at least a few acres. If your neighbors are also providing habitat — or if you can get them interested in doing so — your combined efforts will create a larger ecological unit, useful to a larger variety of wildlife. In any event, it's important to recognize whatever conditions do exist. Fallow fields, barking dogs, noisy streets, vegetable gardens, pine groves, thick shrubbery — all such neighboring elements need to be considered in the complete picture.
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