Dr. Kim Winter recently joined the Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC) to head up an expanded Sustainable Habitat program, helping people who are interested to improve habitat on their land.

PEC’s outreach on sustainable habitat has generated a huge response—emails, phone calls, people coming out for the Wildlife Friendly Farms and Fields Tour. What kinds of information are people looking for the most?

A lot of landowners are really welcoming us.  In many cases, they just want to showcase what they have done on their properties.  Maybe they have a plot of forest that’s been there for 150 years.  Or, maybe they have a problem, such as a pond that’s overwhelmed with algae or vegetation, and they would like someone to consult with them.  The farm tour struck up some interest in wildlife-friendly practices, and people who were there want to find out more about how to create habitats on their properties.  A great number of people have contacted me to find out more about pollinators and how they can encourage them to come around.

One thing that was impressive about the farm tour is that these landowners are going a step beyond just not messing things up.  They’re proactively cultivating and restoring and making things better than they found them.

I completely agree.  I think a lot of people are picking up on the idea of What’s a useful landscape?  When you turn on the news and you hear that birds are in decline, or neotropical migrant birds are losing habitat or forests are being fragmented, it’s easy - like with global climate change - to feel alienated and to feel like people are just the scourge of the planet, they can’t do anything.  But if every single person who had even the smallest plot of land would just take the initiative to convert that into some type of habitat, if everybody just took a little bit of responsibility at home, they’d see a huge conversion in the landscape. 

People can take a really good look at their land and say, what do I want to see here and how do I fit in–pnot just to my neighborhood or my county –but to the whole Piedmont?  Where does my particular plot of land fit into this greater landscape and how I can personally contribute, whether in a small way or a big way, towards helping rather than hurting?

Why is it that so many people are interested in habitat?  Why do they want to see more creatures running or flying or swimming around their land?

People are fascinated by the natural world.  You can take a little baby out and they just want to see the flower because it’s bright and colored.  You get a toddler out there and they want to touch and feel everything.  And then you bring it up to the school-aged kids, who are trying to figure out where an apple comes from.  You can use habitat to teach about food and about reproduction and about how pollination helps to produce the food.  And then you’ve got young adults, adults and seniors, who want to hang out and enjoy breathing fresh air and hearing the birds sing in the spring and summer—like we’re hearing locusts right now in the late summer. 

What are some practical motivations that people might have to increase habitat?

Some people just want put in some native plants that will bring butterflies or birds because they like to watch them.  And some will want to attract bees because they understand that pollination is mostly taken on the shoulders of little bees.  They might think, “What can I do to help them?—because right next to that butterfly garden I have a food garden with vegetables and a lot of tomatoes and squash and other bee-pollinated plants that need help with pollination.” 

When I had my bee colony right next to my garden I had tremendous results with an abundance of produce coming out of my garden.

In a practical sense, when you build habitat, you bring in animals and insects that are going to benefit the ecology of your land.  On an economic level, if you’re a farmer, it helps to build habitat because a lot of times you’re bringing in beneficial insects and you’re bringing in birds that will take care of some of your pest insects. 

Are there any particular projects that people might be interested in now that we’re approaching fall?

We’re winding down one growing season and we’re at the start of another. Obviously, a lot of gardens are changing to cooler weather crops, and from a habitat perspective, landowners need to think about the oncoming winter.  The summer is the season of prosperity from a wildlife standpoint.  Winter is the lean months, when a lot of wildlife are going to die or be forced to migrate elsewhere in search of food.  So, from a wildlife standpoint, people should be focusing on native plants that are producing seeds or berries that are going to make it through the winter months.

Also, fall is also a good time for controlling fescue grass.  Fescue was introduced and isn’t really a good habitat for anything.  So, converting some fescue to more natural grasslands is going to help a lot of species.

It sounds like a lot of the ideas that you’re talking about could be applied on a small scale as well as a large scale.

You can have a habitat on your balcony. It’s all a matter of scale and it’s a matter of how you would like to contribute to the greater landscape.  If you want to help pollinators, you can do that with a couple of garden plants in containers.

If you would like to go to a grander scale, you can take your 100-acre farm and create hedgerows that might be great bobwhite quail habitat.  Or let’s look at the watershed.  You can go looking at the streams that flow through your farm or pasture, or the creek right outside your house, and you can start to think:  is the water there good enough for fish and mussels and crayfish and all those aquatic species?  Is there something I can do to help the toads, frogs and salamanders?

You can invest a whole lot of money and time, or you can do a very small part and still see big impacts.  I’ve seen a lot of people who start small—they might put in a couple of native plants—and then they are so amazed at the increase of biodiversity that they want to keep going.

How can you can be a resource for people who are interested in building habitat?

I think that what people need to start with is a good look at what they’ve got and where they want to go with it.  And then, from there, they can come to PEC and we can guide them.  We can direct them to some of the resources that are available—literature, websites, government programs, us.  Our land conservation officers are there to help.   We have a tremendous GIS staff, so there are many scales that we can look at—from space, with a map, all the way down to the at-home visit, where we’re sitting down and looking directly at their yard and talking about what’s there.   I think that PEC’s in a really unique position in that we’re able to assist locally.  We can work with people who need to know, “What can I do right here?”

Read about PEC's Wildlife Friendly Farms and Fields Tour to learn more about building habitat at home.