Don's Jersey Birding: Every New Jersey Backyard is Critical Habitat
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly on a Buttonbush.
Photo courtesy of Don Torino
by Don Torino
At risk of losing my reputation, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that spring will eventually arrive in New Jersey this year. And that means that it is not too early to start thinking about creating a wildlife habitat right in your own backyard.
Anyone who has grown up in New Jersey has witnessed wildlife habitat destruction at an alarming rate. Thinking back to what it was like when we were kids, there were woods, fields, and ponds to play in and around. Now our kids have to look far and wide to find natural places to play. Wildlife habitat has become fragmented and broken up into smaller areas, making it harder for migrating birds to continue their long journey. The good news is that there is something we can do about it right away and we don’t have to wait for our elected officials to decide if it is a good idea.
Just a few years back you might have been considered a little eccentric if you told your neighbors that you wanted to turn your backyard into a wildlife habitat, but now the idea has really caught on. The great folks of Montclair have been certified by National Wildlife Federation as the first community wildlife habitat in New Jersey. I have worked with Maryrest cemetery in Mahwah, the Saddle Brook Middle/High School Courtyard Project, and many home owners to help them restore their land to benefit wildlife. Conservation organizations have now not only realized that it is important to save the rain forest, but it is also important to save our own communities by turning at least a part of our yards into wildlife habitat.
National Wildlife Federation has long been in the forefront of calling for the creation of backyard wildlife habitat. To date, they have certified more than 140,000 backyard, community, and schoolyard habitats nationwide. My own organization, the National Audubon Society, has devoted their efforts to something called “Audubon at Home”. Their statement is, “Every backyard is important and what we do at home is intimately connected to the health of our larger environment.”
I often tell people that if we treated State parks and nature centers the way we treat our backyards, we would be writing Trenton and be out there with protest signs demanding something be done. Yet we continue to over use pesticides, plant large expanses of wasteland, which we refer to as lawn, and add non-native invasive plants to our home landscape. All of those things deter wildlife from utilizing our backyards. Just as a truck driver knows all the good places to pull over, rest, refuel, and continue their journey, so do migratory birds. Your backyard can mean survival. It can be that critical habitat where they can stop to eat, rest, and make it to their breeding ground this spring.
The great thing when it comes to creating habitat is that size does not matter. You don’t need a big piece of land to make a big difference, and I can personally attest to the truth of that statement. My garden is about 12x60 and I am in a commercial area surrounded by warehouses, but I have about 60 different species of birds and about 15 species of butterflies. I almost find it funny when folks with more property and live in a much more rural area than myself tell me they never see hummingbirds, or they can’t get house wrens in their yards. If I can do it, most anybody can do it.
In 2007, I had my X-Files moment and I no longer felt like a voice in the wilderness. I had the evidence. “The truth was out there,” and it was in the form of Doug Tallamy’s book, “Bringing Nature Home”.
Tallamy, a professor of entomology and wildlife ecology at the University of Delaware, says in his groundbreaking book, “Unless we restore native plants to our suburban ecosystems, the future of biodiversity in the United States is dim.” He goes on to say, “Like it or not, gardeners have become important layers in the management of our nations wildlife.”
So now we have scientific evidence on why we should restore our backyards to a healthy environment and it is now up to us to change the way we think about our backyards. Every backyard is a vital living habitat, and here in New Jersey we can see why it is so important for us to get our backyards back to nature. As spring approaches, I will be devoting more of my weekly articles to help you get started with your own backyard habitat so that you can help make a difference.
At risk of losing my reputation, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that spring will eventually arrive in New Jersey this year. And that means that it is not too early to start thinking about creating a wildlife habitat right in your own backyard.
Anyone who has grown up in New Jersey has witnessed wildlife habitat destruction at an alarming rate. Thinking back to what it was like when we were kids, there were woods, fields, and ponds to play in and around. Now our kids have to look far and wide to find natural places to play. Wildlife habitat has become fragmented and broken up into smaller areas, making it harder for migrating birds to continue their long journey. The good news is that there is something we can do about it right away and we don’t have to wait for our elected officials to decide if it is a good idea.
Just a few years back you might have been considered a little eccentric if you told your neighbors that you wanted to turn your backyard into a wildlife habitat, but now the idea has really caught on. The great folks of Montclair have been certified by National Wildlife Federation as the first community wildlife habitat in New Jersey. I have worked with Maryrest cemetery in Mahwah, the Saddle Brook Middle/High School Courtyard Project, and many home owners to help them restore their land to benefit wildlife. Conservation organizations have now not only realized that it is important to save the rain forest, but it is also important to save our own communities by turning at least a part of our yards into wildlife habitat.
National Wildlife Federation has long been in the forefront of calling for the creation of backyard wildlife habitat. To date, they have certified more than 140,000 backyard, community, and schoolyard habitats nationwide. My own organization, the National Audubon Society, has devoted their efforts to something called “Audubon at Home”. Their statement is, “Every backyard is important and what we do at home is intimately connected to the health of our larger environment.”
I often tell people that if we treated State parks and nature centers the way we treat our backyards, we would be writing Trenton and be out there with protest signs demanding something be done. Yet we continue to over use pesticides, plant large expanses of wasteland, which we refer to as lawn, and add non-native invasive plants to our home landscape. All of those things deter wildlife from utilizing our backyards. Just as a truck driver knows all the good places to pull over, rest, refuel, and continue their journey, so do migratory birds. Your backyard can mean survival. It can be that critical habitat where they can stop to eat, rest, and make it to their breeding ground this spring.
The great thing when it comes to creating habitat is that size does not matter. You don’t need a big piece of land to make a big difference, and I can personally attest to the truth of that statement. My garden is about 12x60 and I am in a commercial area surrounded by warehouses, but I have about 60 different species of birds and about 15 species of butterflies. I almost find it funny when folks with more property and live in a much more rural area than myself tell me they never see hummingbirds, or they can’t get house wrens in their yards. If I can do it, most anybody can do it.
In 2007, I had my X-Files moment and I no longer felt like a voice in the wilderness. I had the evidence. “The truth was out there,” and it was in the form of Doug Tallamy’s book, “Bringing Nature Home”.
Tallamy, a professor of entomology and wildlife ecology at the University of Delaware, says in his groundbreaking book, “Unless we restore native plants to our suburban ecosystems, the future of biodiversity in the United States is dim.” He goes on to say, “Like it or not, gardeners have become important layers in the management of our nations wildlife.”
So now we have scientific evidence on why we should restore our backyards to a healthy environment and it is now up to us to change the way we think about our backyards. Every backyard is a vital living habitat, and here in New Jersey we can see why it is so important for us to get our backyards back to nature. As spring approaches, I will be devoting more of my weekly articles to help you get started with your own backyard habitat so that you can help make a difference.
Don Torino is the Education Chairperson for Bergen County Audubon Society.
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Posted by WILDNEWJERSEY at 2/22/2011 7:00 AM 
Categories: Don's Jersey Birding
Tags: wildlife habitat backyard National Wildlife Federation wildlife habitat
Categories: Don's Jersey Birding
Tags: wildlife habitat backyard National Wildlife Federation wildlife habitat
Excellent article with good advice for all nature lovers. Give up on the lawn - it's too much work and too costly! Plant a little something for wildlife and enjoy. Please, please give up the pesticides. Every spring, dozens of robins return to my neighborhood, then disappear in a couple of months, having succumbed to the lawn pesticides absorbed by the earthworms that the robins eat.
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What Don said about our back yard is so true. I get hummingbirds, cardinals, blue jays, lots of mourning doves but the squirrels get to eat most of the food I put out. They outwit any feeder. Perhaps we could provide info to our neighbors about the harm they do to wildlife with pesticides. We can try to change things
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