Plant Your Corridor to Connect Remnant Habitat

There was a time when the gusto of Manifest Destiny, the promise homesteading, and the sheer lack of forethought led a nation to near ecological ruin. Species now extinct or extirpated; whole states had to be reforested, and eventually a conservation movement brought forth national parks and forests, and other such zones which create a patchwork of wilderness.

Remnant habit created by planting: Big and Little Blue Stem, Black Eyed Susan, Purple Coneflower, Butterfly Milkweed, Cardinal Flower, False Indigo, Lupine, Bee Balm, and Obedient Plant.

Today one can look at a map of Wisconsin and see this patchwork of green zones which largely dominates the northern portion of our state, and we are lucky. By comparison, our neighbors in Iowa, Indiana, and Illinois have no green spaces. The wilderness of these places is replaced by pavement or turned over by plow.

We live in a time where it has become clear that while these pockets of wilderness are beneficial, they are too sporadic and isolated to preserve the existing diversity of species over the long run. There's still some debate over the effectiveness of wildlife corridors ranging from wild success stories to dismal failure. While we consider the success and failure of modern efforts, we can take a moment to ponder these words:

The shrinkage in the flora is due to a combination of clean-farming, woodlot grazing, and good roads. Each of these necessary changes of course requires a larger reduction in the acreage available for wild plants, but none of them requires, or benefits by, the erasure of species from whole farms, townships, or counties. There are idle spots on every farm, and every highway is bordered by an idle strip as long as it is; keep cow, plow, and mower out of these idle spots, and the full native flora, plus dozens of interesting stowaways from foreign parts, could be part of the normal environment of every citizen. - Aldo Leopold

Wildlife corridors aren't and can't be specific zones and boundaries drawn on a map. Real corridors are created everywhere by leaving some of nature right where it was before we put in the road, plowed the field, or built our house.

If you look at a map of your municipality you may notice features that I noticed; things which Doug Tallamy points out in the The Living Landscape. Even on a smaller scale we isolate nature preserves and parks. There's a prairie on the east side of my town and a marsh on the southwest side, but in between are homes and roads and businesses and schools.

This is where we come in. One house, one yard providing remnant habitat is a start, one neighborhood is better. I started native planting as a project for myself. To see more birds. To test my green thumb. To do some basic green things like save on water and encourage biodiversity.

Immature Bluebirds back from somewhere, stopping by for a visit.

It's become a way of life and in a way an ethical code. In reading what those who came before me taught, I realized that my quarter of an acre was a small piece in a century of conservation efforts. Now when a Gray Catbird drops in, I wonder whether he is headed to or from the marsh. When the Bluebirds visit in the morning, I wonder whether they've come from the prairie this morning or from the wetlands. In my town, my yard is but a piece of a greater fabric; a piece of corridor.