How To Make Your Wetland Wildlife Friendly

In this video, Kathlyn Osagie goes over various ways you can make your backyard wetland wildlife-friendly. She explains that when building a wetland you want to make sure to include pits and mounds of soil which will lead to a variation in vegetation and water depth. You also want to include twigs, branches and logs, for wildlife to use for hiding, basking or attaching egg masses. For better success, design and build your wetland for specific wildlife. Bats do not land to drink water. They drink while flying and some species need up to 20 feet of swoop zone before attempting to drink water. If they hit something they could fall in and drown. Creating habitat for turtles would include adding basking logs and creating loose mounds of soil outside of the wetland so that they could lay eggs near a water source. Creating a wetland for red-legged frogs would have plenty of branches, twigs and logs for them to attach their eggs masses and keep fish out. Dragonflies are great at keeping mosquito populations down because their larvae eat mosquito larvae. They love to perch on twigs so add those into your wetland. Lastly, try and add native plants whenever possible and avoid using pesticides.