On the QT | The Official Newsletter of GWA June-July 2016 | Page 20

SUSTAINABILITY NANCY TAYLOR ROBSON Gardens as wildlife corridors Part 1, Urban Why we need more wildlife friendly gardens In the next issue of On the QT, look for Part 2, which examines creating wildlife corridors on larger properties. I DISJOINTED BYWAYS “Development is segmenting corridors and green spaces,” says Beth Pratt-Bergstrom, the NFW’s California director. “That smashes genetic diversity.” A wildlife ‘island’ that isolates a wild population usually spells its doom, as the isolation causes each generation to diminish. For example, there is a group of 15 mountain lions living in the Santa Monica, California, hills that can’t safely get out to seek new mates. One young male was hit and killed last year while trying to leave. While we may not want mountain lions in our back yards, we do want a healthy, intact food web, which requires a diversity of wildlife. Plants, particularly native and naturalized plants, play a huge role in this. 20 P H O T O C O U R T E S Y D AV I D M I Z E J E W S K I . magine you’re about to cycle cross country, but there is just one place¬, say, an obscure town outside Wichita, Kansas, where you can find food, water and shelter. That’s akin to what a host of species, including birds and key pollinators, face today. Where there once were flourishing corridors of native and naturalized plants that provided habitat for wildlife, there are now fragments hemmed in by cities, highways, paved urban sprawl and suburban developments that are composed primarily of acres of that sterile monoculture—the lawn. “Our activities, unfortunately, destroy a lot of wildlife habitat,” says David Mizejewski, naturalist for the National Wildlife Federation (NFW). Wildlife needs food, water, cover and a place to raise young. Additionally, it needs connectivity between those nurturing spaces to be able to migrate and move from one gene pool to another, which helps to keep a species healthy and is critical to its survival. David Mizejewski’s garden is entirely enclosed, so it isn’t connected to a wildlife corridor (yet). Every gardener can take similar initial steps toward connectivity and then encourage neighbors to do the same. His garden includes: a water feature in front of a tomato and hyssop (Agastache spp.). The simple water container holds pickerel weed (Pontederia cordata), dwarf cattail (Typha minima) and Iris versicolor. Just to its side is a tiny bog garden of varied pitcher plants (Sarracenia purpurea); toward the back is Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium spp.). Gardens comprised of native and related plant communities can go a long way toward meeting the biological needs of wildlife. The NWF’s wildlife habitat program encourages recreating habitat through wildlife friendly gardens, which the organization will certify. Even a patchwork of these gardens in a sea of concrete and lawn benefits wildlife. In 2010, then-graduate student Steffenie Widows visited and surveyed 50 wildlife-certified homes in Orlando, Florida, to get a snapshot of the program’s effectiveness. She discovered that each garden exhibited a much greater diversity of wildlife than its non-certified neighbors. Over the years, the wildlife corridor campaign has been gaining traction, with more than 300,000 acres of wildlife habitat in nearly 200,000 gardens nationwide. “There are about 4,000 people in Los Angeles, who have signed up,” says Pratt-Bergstrom. This is a good start, but it’s the contiguousness of these gardens that creates a corridor, instead of the equivalent of a waystation.