You don’t have to go to a lot of trouble to create a more wildlife-friendly yard. In many cases, the less trouble you go to, the better, says University of Wisconsin-Madison wildlife ecologist Anna Pidgeon.
“Think about not tidying things up,” she suggests.

Basically, the idea is to find opportunities to re-create the kind of cover that has been lost through many decades of development, Pidgeon explains. “We change land cover, so we convert natural habitat to agriculture or urban cover,” she says. “The changes we make benefit some species and degrade habitat for other species.”
Altering landscapes to benefit wildlife doesn’t have to require drastic transformation, she emphasizes. It’s more a matter of letting the landscape change on its own—leaving fallen logs to rot, for example.

“Logs, in many different decay classes, from hard to soft and literally holding water like a sponge, are really important for a variety of different wildlife species,” Pidgeon says.

Fallen logs are useful not only to the insects and other things that scurry away when you roll one over, but mammals and birds as well.  “Shrews use that little space under the edge of the log to travel back and forth and to hunt for insects.  Grouse use logs for drumming,” she says.

Wildlife get similar benefits from standing dead trees from 4-inch diameter on up.  “As the dead trees decay, carpenter ants work away digesting that cellulose, and in turn are really important food for pileated woodpeckers and other woodpecker species,” Pidgeon says.

The most effective wildlife habitats also have plenty of native plants and a minimum of non-native species. Native tree species provide great habitat, especially if there’s a wide range of ages from saplings through old, mature trees.

Planting species that provide food for animals also helps. As it turns out, wildlife like many of the same plants that we do.  Many birds and both large and small mammals flock to raspberries, blackberries and thimbleberries in the summer.  They also like native cherries. In the winter, nut trees, sumacs and pines sustain some mammals and birds.  Evergreens offer shelter during the cold months.

The effort you put into creating a wildlife friendly landscape will pay you dividends as well— such as “the feeling you get when you hear the sound of wind in the pines,” Pidgeon says.  “Part of it seems to be the wonder of discovery, of turning over a log and finding a Salamander or Spring Peeper on a tree in your yard.”