Everyone as Conservationist - Yards as Wildlife Corridors

Wildlife corridors are not a new idea. All over the world people have managed to conserve plots of land (sometimes incredibly large plots of land) as parks and nature preserves. These parks can be far apart separated by highways, roads, houses, cities, farm fields, and other man-made obstacles.

The obstacles vary in difficulty depending on a species modes of transportation. Turtles, toads and snakes seem to have particular challenges crossing roads, but it's not uncommon to find faster mammals: deer, raccoons, opossums, etc along the side of the road. Over short distances, birds might fair better but their struggle navigating migration past light pollution and glass city-scape is at least as daunting if not more daunting than the movement of other animals.


Green Frog in the road near our house.


Wildlife corridors are intended to help connect the patchwork of wild places.

They have often come to the forefront of conservation efforts when helping large animals (Florida Panther, Grizzly Bear, Pronghorn) successfully connect to others of their species, mostly for the purposes of ensuring a deep enough gene pool and connecting individuals for the purpose of finding a mate.

A recent study being done to understand the impact of wildlife corridors in the Southern Pine Savannas confirms the benefit of the corridors and not just for the larger species.

Article from WPR

Article from Univ. of Wisconsin

The study shows that plant species and small animals also benefit from the corridors, and that the corridors help prevent extinction. The overall number of species increase as a result of the plant biodiversity improving.

Here's the cool part, the part not in the study, your yard can be a part of this. Take this example. On one side of town, there is prairie with a stand of oaks that is managed by the county. On the other side of the town, there is wetland and prairie (also with a stand of oaks) managed by the state. In between, there's the town: roads, bike paths, parks, houses, etc.

So if I plant plants which are similar to the plants found in those parks: oaks, asters, coneflower, bluestem, etc. Then my yard is effectively part of the greater ecosystem. My yard on its own isn't enough to be a corridor. My house is closer to the county prairie. Animals entering my yard would have a pretty long hike across town to get to the wetlands.

So imagine that it's not just my yard. What if it's the whole neighborhood? And now go bigger; what if it's my neighborhood and the next one over. If enough of us are planting with native plants through town, then people's yards become the corridor which connects these two parks.

We wouldn't have solved all of the problems. Animals would still need to successfully cross roads and birds would need to avoid hitting windows, but we would have made their journey easier by providing shelter, food, and generally familiar surroundings. And following the logic of the study; our town would be effectively preventing species from going extinct.