Wildlife Tag
Schoolyard Wildlife Habitat Tips
An outdoor classroom developed through the Alabama Outdoor Classroom Program must provide habitat for local backyard wildlife on your school's campus.
Click on the links below for tips about how to improve your school's wildlife habitat:
What is Habitat? | How to Assess our Schoolyard Habitat | Habitat Tips for Backyard Wildlife (to come)
What is Habitat?
Food
Everyone needs to eat! Planting native forbs, shrubs, and trees is the easiest (and cheapest) way to provide the foliage, nectar, pollen, and mast (seeds, berries, acorns and nuts) that many species of wildlife require to survive and thrive. The ideal wildlife management plan uses locally native vegetation to meet the year-round needs of wildlife.
Water
Wildlife needs sources of clean water for many purposes including drinking, bathing, and reproduction. Water sources may include natural features such as ponds, streams, or wetlands. Many species including salamanders, frogs, toads, and insects (like dragonflies) begin life in water and are unlikely to prosper in your outdoor classroom without a safe, healthy water environment.
Cover
Just as people need the shelter of a house, wildlife require protective cover to remain safe from people, predators, and inclement weather. The easiest way to provide cover for terrestrial wildlife is by using native vegetation, both dead and alive. Plants ranging in size and density from ground cover to tall, mature trees, including both evergreen and deciduous plants, provides birds and other wildlife with the appropriate cover for feeding, hiding, mating and reproductive activities. Densely branched shrubs, thickets, and brush piles provide great hiding places within their bushy leaves and thorns, while other wildlife may use tree cavities in snags (dead trees), leaf litter, fallen limbs, rotting logs, and rock piles as cover.
Places to Raise Young
Many places for cover can double as a sheltered place where wildlife can raise their young away from predators and inclement weather. For example, many butterflies use wildflower meadows for protection from wind and as “host plants” to lay their eggs. A brush pile can provide cover for rabbits and their young. However, some wildlife require an alternative to the cover they use during non-reproductive times such as cavity nesting birds that require snags with natural cavities for nesting or frogs that need a pond to raise their young (tadpoles).
Habitat Assessment
Once your outdoor classroom site is chosen, you need to work with your students to determine what habitat already exists and what habitat resources you want to add. Below are basic steps you will need to take to conduct your habitat assessment:
> Determine which backyard wildlife species are native to your area.
> Identify which of those species you would like to attract to your schoolyard habitat.
> Research the habitat needs of the species you chose.
> Assess whether or not your outdoor classroom already includes those habitat resources.
> If the outdoor classroom lacks specific resources, create a plan for how you will add those resources to the habitat.
Below are resources that your students can use for the habitat assessment:
- Watchable Wildlife section of the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources website
- National Audubon Society Regional Guide to the Southeastern States
- Alabama Wildlife book series by Ralph Mirarchi
If you need on-site assistance, contact your local Outdoor Classroom Consultant or the Alabama Outdoor Classroom Program Coordinator at aprilwaltz@alabamawildlife.org.
Habitat Tips (to come)
.
Click on the links below for tips about how to improve your school's wildlife habitat:
What is Habitat? | How to Assess our Schoolyard Habitat | Habitat Tips for Backyard Wildlife (to come)
What is Habitat?
Food
Everyone needs to eat! Planting native forbs, shrubs, and trees is the easiest (and cheapest) way to provide the foliage, nectar, pollen, and mast (seeds, berries, acorns and nuts) that many species of wildlife require to survive and thrive. The ideal wildlife management plan uses locally native vegetation to meet the year-round needs of wildlife.
Water
Wildlife needs sources of clean water for many purposes including drinking, bathing, and reproduction. Water sources may include natural features such as ponds, streams, or wetlands. Many species including salamanders, frogs, toads, and insects (like dragonflies) begin life in water and are unlikely to prosper in your outdoor classroom without a safe, healthy water environment.
Cover
Just as people need the shelter of a house, wildlife require protective cover to remain safe from people, predators, and inclement weather. The easiest way to provide cover for terrestrial wildlife is by using native vegetation, both dead and alive. Plants ranging in size and density from ground cover to tall, mature trees, including both evergreen and deciduous plants, provides birds and other wildlife with the appropriate cover for feeding, hiding, mating and reproductive activities. Densely branched shrubs, thickets, and brush piles provide great hiding places within their bushy leaves and thorns, while other wildlife may use tree cavities in snags (dead trees), leaf litter, fallen limbs, rotting logs, and rock piles as cover.
Places to Raise Young
Many places for cover can double as a sheltered place where wildlife can raise their young away from predators and inclement weather. For example, many butterflies use wildflower meadows for protection from wind and as “host plants” to lay their eggs. A brush pile can provide cover for rabbits and their young. However, some wildlife require an alternative to the cover they use during non-reproductive times such as cavity nesting birds that require snags with natural cavities for nesting or frogs that need a pond to raise their young (tadpoles).
Habitat Assessment
Once your outdoor classroom site is chosen, you need to work with your students to determine what habitat already exists and what habitat resources you want to add. Below are basic steps you will need to take to conduct your habitat assessment:
> Determine which backyard wildlife species are native to your area.
> Identify which of those species you would like to attract to your schoolyard habitat.
> Research the habitat needs of the species you chose.
> Assess whether or not your outdoor classroom already includes those habitat resources.
> If the outdoor classroom lacks specific resources, create a plan for how you will add those resources to the habitat.
Below are resources that your students can use for the habitat assessment:
- Watchable Wildlife section of the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources website
- National Audubon Society Regional Guide to the Southeastern States
- Alabama Wildlife book series by Ralph Mirarchi
If you need on-site assistance, contact your local Outdoor Classroom Consultant or the Alabama Outdoor Classroom Program Coordinator at aprilwaltz@alabamawildlife.org.
Habitat Tips (to come)
.