   Backyard Wildlife Habitat - January 30, 2002 Jeff Schalau, County Director, Agent, Agriculture & Natural Resources Arizona Cooperative Extension, Yavapai County As an Extension Agent, I often tell people how to discourage wildlife from causing damage, but seldom tell them how to enhance wildlife habitat around their homes. Most gardeners enjoy viewing wildlife. However, the joy of viewing can be overshadowed by damage caused by unwanted visitors. To understand individual wildlife species' habitat requirements and behavior is to live in harmony with them. This becomes increasingly important the closer you live to open space. The transition zone between a populated area with paved streets and houses and undeveloped open space is called the wildland/urban interface. These interface areas have the highest potential for wildlife conflict. This is especially true in areas of new construction. It is important to remember that the wildlife species were here first and we are newcomers. Well, enough philosophy. Let's move on to some practical information and applications. Habitat is defined by four essential elements: food, water, shelter (cover), and space. The foundation of the habitat is the vegetation type that exists on the site. Food sources may include plant material (including roots, pollen, and nectar), insects, or other animals. If preferred food sources are not available but other habitat elements are optimal, then some species will look for new sources of food such as pet food, vegetable gardens, fruit trees, or landscape plants. Just as we are attracted to cooling, relaxing environment that water creates, wildlife is also attracted. As you are likely aware, water features (ponds, fountains, etc.) are becoming increasingly popular with gardening enthusiasts. If you have a water feature in your landscape, you can plan on furry and feathered visitors. Some precaution you should be aware of follow. If the water feature is deeper than 1 or 2 inches, you should provide a means for animals to escape if they fall in. This can be some gently sloping rocks, bricks, or a sturdy wooden ramp. Ponds with fish are also attractive to predators such as raccoons and blue herons. Deep ponds (2 feet) rocks and/or vegetation will provide fish with necessary cover to evade predators. Algae will grow in water features during warmer weather. Some chemicals are available to prevent algal growth. Before adding these chemicals, read the label so that you understand how they could affect wildlife drinking this water. Shelter can be provided by vegetation, large rocks, standing dead trees, down logs, debris piles, wood piles, prickly pear cactus, dead yucca leaves, crawl spaces under houses, old cars, and broken appliances. Personal taste will determine which of these is most desirable for each individual's aesthetic values. You may unknowingly be providing habitat to undesirable species in that old washing machine out back. A mixture of evergreen and deciduous trees will provide birds with a combination of perches and cover during the winter months. Trees and shrubs that carry foliage to the ground provide shelter for rabbits and quail. Crawl spaces under homes are notoriously attractive to skunks, rock squirrels, woodrats, and raccoons. The especially like to climb behind shower stalls and bathtubs. I don't recommend encouraging or even allowing these animals to use crawl spaces as shelter. Space is probably the most difficult habitat element to understand and definitely the most expensive to provide. Large animals such as elk and deer require a large area to range like a ranch. Woodrats have much smaller space requirements. However, they do range some distance at night. Birds can fly from one space to another, but if you want them to nest, the space must have specific traits that vary from species to species. Rock squirrels need below ground space as well as above ground shelter. Space that gophers prefer is loamy, somewhat deep soil with few rocks. Some animals can be attracted fairly easily. Birds are a good example. Keep a feeder in a safe place. Fill it with high quality seed, suet, or fresh sugar water and you will have many visitors. Rather than having to remember to restock sugar water and clean the feeder, I prefer growing nectar producing flowers for hummingbirds. These include penstemon, Indian paintbrush, honeysuckle, skyrocket (Gilia), and columbine. If you buy cheap birdseed, they will pick through the milo kicking it out on the ground to find the sunflower seeds. This seed on the ground will attract javelina, rock squirrels, rats, mice, and other potentially undesirable visitors. If you do feed birds, be consistent and keep that feeder clean and filled. The Audubon Society web site has lots of information on feeding and landscaping to benefit birds. The web address is: www.audubon.org. Do not leave cat or other pet food out for raccoons, javelinas, and other wildlife species. This practice creates an unnatural increase in wildlife populations thereby causing an increase in nuisance wildlife activity. In addition, feeding causes them to become dependent on this food source making them lazy and unable to forage naturally for food, subsequently, these animals may become aggressive towards both people and pets. This dependency can cause normally secretive and shy wild animals to chase, harass, bite or attack both pets and humans while looking for a handout. Next week, I will discuss methods of discouraging unwanted wildlife in the landscape and dealing with nuisance animals. The University of Arizona Cooperative Extension has publications and information on wildlife and various control methods. If you have other gardening questions, call the Master Gardener line in the Cottonwood office at 646-9113 or E-mail us at mgardener@verdeonline.com and be sure to include your address and phone number. Find past Backyard Gardener columns or submit column ideas at the Backyard Gardener web site: http://ag.arizona.edu/yavapai/anr/hort/byg/. |