Shelter for Wildlife in the Backyard

This is Passport to Texas

Wildscaping is a method of landscaping that allows urban dwellers to create sustainable wildlife habitat in their yards. The first element of a Wildscape: shelter.

07—Shelter is primarily done by structuring your landscape so that you have some plants at every level of the horizon.

Mark Klym oversees the wildscaping program at Texas Parks and Wildlife. Shelter gives wildlife places to escape or to nest.

10—A lot of people think of nests, they think tall trees. Well, most of our birds don’t nest in tall trees. They nest within five feet of the ground. And, so, if we take out all the brush at the five foot level, we’ve eliminated their habitat.

Klym says when you structure your landscape with plants at every level – including lower brush — it becomes attractive to more species.

10—At the same time, that lower vegetation serves as a great food resource usually, because that’s usually the plants that your berries, your nets, your nectar flower are going to occur on.

You can find more information about wildscaping – including a native plant database — on the Texas Parks and Wildlife web site.

That’s our show for today …For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

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