Wildlife in the Garden
Enjoying Wildlife in the Garden
We live in this world with other species and it just makes sense to enjoy and appreciate their presence. Habitat loss is one of the greatest threats to America's wildlife. All species, including ourselves live in particular habitats that suit them best.
Making homes or habitat for other creatures is not only the right thing to do to protect wildlife, but will make your life more interesting. Enjoying wildlife can make your life richer from the pleasure, enjoyment and even education that comes with observing your backyard neighbors. Some people even develop new interests such as woodworking (making wildlife housing or feeders) and photography (some of the best wildlife photography comes from backyard wildlife enthusiasts).
Food, Water and Shelter
A habitat to attract wildlife can be as small as a deck or patio with a single birdfeeder to a typical urban backyard to an acreage with windbreaks and wooded areas. Birds and animals do not ask for much. What is needed for habitat is an environment that provides food, water and shelter.
Sources of Information
More and more people are finding pleasure in sharing and watching wildlife so information of how to attract wildlife is fairly easy to find. The University of Nebraska Extension department has some publications that have helpful information on attracting wildlife to your gardens. Another site is the National Wildlife Federation which not only encourages providing habitat for wildlife, but has a program to register your garden as a certified wildlife habitat. NancysGardens is Backyard Habitat #3583
Beginning a Wildlife habitat
Our human habits of living cause the ideal habitats for other species to disappear. When we remove forests and prairies, dam free flowing rives, build large building and pave the soil with hard asphalt and concrete surfaces, most plants and animals who lived there no longer are able to survive. To increase animals we want to encourage to share our gardens with, we need to provide habitats the need and are attracted to. The need sites for homes, to find safety from predators, and food and water.
To begin, you need to decide who you want to attract, then find out their needs. For instance, not all birds like wooded areas, some like open spaces like the typical grassy yard, so look at your conditions and at what it is possible to create.
Are you interested in inviting a few birds to a feeder and hopfully getting them to stay and raise families, or do you want all sorts of creatures? Plants that wildlife are attracted to is an excellent way to begin, and the more diverse the plantings, the greater the diversity of creatures who will be attracted.
Some people are worried that in order to attract wildlife, the yard and garden must be unkempt and wild looking. What is needed is diversity and this can be achieved in a tidy landscape.
Some also wonder if it is possible to enjoy the garden and attract wildlife because some wildlife do not seem to us to be very good neighbors like rabbits and deer eating the garden plants or squirrels taking all the food set out for the song birds. While there may be some challenges, usually there is a solution that is non-lethal.
Create Edges
Not all species need the same environment, but one way to begin is to create edges. Most of us already have some sort of open area created by turf. Add shrubs and trees on the edges of the grass and birds and other critters have places to sit and hide and to look out over the area before going out into open spaces that makes them feel secure from predators.
Stratification
Another concept is called stratification, which is utilizing many different levels of plants from tall trees, mid level trees and shrubs to the understory level plants. Different species prefer different levels, so this will not only be copying nature, but will attract a greater range of species.
.................The ideal is that we should live in harmony with all. Observing the nature of humans, we seem to desire to get along with other species about as well as we do with other humans, which is not always a very positive thing. We pick and choose who we like or dislike, based not on any real danger to us, but rather, how useful we perceive them to be. In some cases these other species create a challenge to us humans such as when cockroaches and rats move in or pigeons or starlings come to roost. When this happens our technology has advanced so that we have a virtual arsenal of weapons of mass destruction to eradicate those we consider intruders on our space. Unfortunately these methods are often harmful to ourselves and other innocent species. The solution is to look at the habitat needs of those we consider pest species and see if there is some way to use less dangerous and intrusive methods to discourage them.
In the garden it can be frustrating when we work hard to have nice plantings, in what we believe to be OUR gardens and other species don't recognize our dominion, eating prized petunias, hostas and peas.
If we dont understand those who are nibbling, its easy to strike with all manner of weapons of mass destruction. The reason is waht I call the FEAR FACTOR. Sometimes humans are only afraid of the intruders. These feelings of terror cause some people to react irrationally. They desire to annihilate them whatever is imagined to be the source of the fear, and at the same time increase their own feelings of power and superiority in order to reduce feelings of terror.
An example: Bugs of any species, spiders, mice and snakes seem to terrify some people. They react by using any weapon at their disposal, not caring if there is any collateral damage or if the punishment actually fits the crime.
We live in this world with other species
