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The area around your home, including the backyard, is the perfect location to enhance wildlife habitat. One reason is that you are already managing the property--growing and mowing grass, tending to trees and shrubs, and planting flower and vegetable gardens. You can use these management strategies to enhance wildlife habitat. Another reason the backyard should be managed for wildlife is that your backyard is probably an edge to another type of habitat such as a cropland, grassland, woodlot, brushland, fencerow, hedge, or other land boundary. With a little management, wildlife that inhabit these edges will most likely frequent your yard. Further, what better place to enjoy wildlife than in your own backyard? Also, developing a wildlife management plan for your backyard can enhance the natural beauty of your home and actually increase its value. Before you can develop a management plan, you should know what wildlife need to survive, and thus what will attract them to your yard. Wildlife cannot exist without the four components that comprise habitat: food, water, cover, and space. When their habitat is fragmented or destroyed, these components become limited. Remove or fail to provide any one of these components and wildlife will not survive. These conditions put wildlife at risk, including vulnerability to predators, accidents, and starvation. Because some types of wildlife are not very mobile, local populations may be easily lost when habitat is destroyed. Also, different kinds of wildlife need different combinations of food, water, cover, and space. Your property may not be large enough to provide all of the habitat needs for the kinds of wildlife you wish to attract. However, you can offer one or more components of habitat and still attract a variety of wildlife to your yard. Usually, a management plan with the widest range of plantings and artificial structures and features will attract the greatest assortment and number of birds, mammals, butterflies, moths, amphibians, and reptiles. Working with neighbors on an overall management plan is a good way to increase both of your properties' appeal to wildlife. Patience is important because some wildlife species may require several years to find the habitat and use it.
Backyard Habitat ComponentsFood for wildlife is easy to supply. Besides planting natural foods, you can supplement with a variety of products, especially for seed-eating birds. Although wildlife can't survive in your backyard on food alone, you can attract migrant birds and nearby resident species. The ideal backyard plan supplies as much diversity in food items as possible through plantings of shrubs, trees, flowers, and grasses. Carefully choosing these plants can provide food directly in the form of fruits, berries, nuts, seeds, and nectar. Indirectly, they provide habitat for other sources of food such as insects, spiders, grubs, and worms. Features such as small ponds and piles of rocks, brush, and leaves improve both the variety and quantity of available food.
Cover helps shield wildlife from harmful weather and protects them from
predators. Different kinds of cover serve the sheltering needs of different wildlife
species. Rock piles or piles of
The greater the diversity of habitat, the greater the variety and number of wildlife species attracted to the habitat. Some of the best backyard habitats are those comprised of trees bordered by tall shrubs and low shrubs, which are next to wildflowers or native grasses bordered by a small amount of lawn. Each border provides a different kind of "edge". What follows is a summary of management ideas for your property. Each consideration is more fully explained in the chapters in this Backyard Section. An example of a landscape providing the four wildlife habitat components.Trees and ShrubsTrees and shrubs add color to landscapes, provide shade in summer, protection from wind in winter, and offer texture to the area around your home. Planting trees and shrubs in your yard will reduce the area of lawn, which will reduce mowing and maintenance giving you more time to enjoy your property. In the long run it will also save you money as you will no longer need fertilizers, pesticides, or irrigation. Plantings that serve a dual-purpose--providing food for wildlife and aesthetic beauty for your home, for example--increase in home value, and therefore deserve strong consideration in backyard planning.
When choosing trees and shrubs for your property, considering color, texture, and height will help you to provide a pleasing landscape. Early blossoming shrubs such as crabapples, lilacs, and redbud offer spring color. Silky dogwood and red elder give summer color, and red elder, serviceberry, and red-osier dogwood provide a palette of beauty in late summer and early fall. Fall-fruiting shrubs and the leaves of maple, birch, aspen, and other deciduous trees furnish an array of color in fall. Red-osier dogwoods show a striking red, and conifers give a pleasing green to a bleak winter landscape. Pyramidal-shaped American mountain-ash and spruces, round-shaped crabapples and dogwoods, and flat junipers all add different shapes and sizes to your property. The fine textures of hemlock, white pine, and serviceberry can be a sharp contrast to rough-textured plants such as hawthorn and jack pine. Trees and shrubs come in all heights. Choosing a variety assures nesting and feeding sites for birds with strong preferences for specific elevations, providing visual screens, and adding to landscape diversity.
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Wildlife need water, for both drinking and bathing. You
can provide water in a birdbath, recirculating waterfall, shallow dish, or dripping hose.
Most desirable is a small, shallow pond with an area large enough to support plants that
grow in water and around the edge. The pond will become the center of activity for a wide
range of wildlife species. 
wood, for example, help keep chipmunks safe from hawks and cats.
Brush piles protect rabbits, toads, and salamanders. Dense shrubs shelter chickadees and
cardinals. Painted turtles and leopard frogs hide under submerged logs when threatened.
Cavities in trees offer safe places for 
All wildlife need space and some species--in particular
most nesting birds--are highly territorial. Space and territorial needs vary with each
wildlife species. By understanding how much space is necessary for each species, you can
learn what wildlife is attracted to your property. 
The wildlife habitat components that trees and shrubs create
include cover for nesting and rearing young, secure winter cover, and summer, fall, and
winter foods. For example, dense pines and spruces provide 
Grasses and Ground Covers
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wild or where you plant to a specific grass type to create a meadow, prairie, or
wildflower viewing spot. Mixing flowers with grasses is a good choice as they will furnish
a nectar source for bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds.
Homes and Feeders for Wildlife
