Resources - Landowner Tips
Being neighbourly to a natural area
Natural areas make very good neighbours and sharing a boundary with one is truly a unique experience. Living next to a natural area provides neighbours with privacy, an aesthetic view, and depending upon your neighbouring area they can provide other benefits like biodiversity protection, water quality and quantity control, shade, erosion control, and in this busy world, a place of calm and tranquility.
Neighbours work best when they are working together and for all the things natural areas provide, there are ways these special places could use your help to achieve their full potential.
Plants and animals do not recognize borders. Invasive plants, for instance, can travel impressive distances colonizing disturbed ground or gardens on both sides of a fence. Birds, wildlife and domestic animals can also be welcomed visitors or nuisance pests. We’ve outlined a few tips that can help natural areas and neighbours happily co-exist.
Accessing Natural Areas
Some natural areas are open to the public and usually have designated pedestrian
trails. By keeping to a main trail you are:
- able to enjoy the property;
- help get to where you are going easily;
- reduce damaging impacts to rare plants, fragile habitats and potentially nesting or breeding animals.
Motorized Recreational Vehicles, and often mountain bikes, are not compatible with nature preserve protection, as they can seriously disturb soils, the plants and wildlife.
Native Plantings
Plant native species from local seeds whenever possible, particularly in decorative gardens. Non-native, invasive species such as Tartarian Honeysuckle or Japanese Barberry are real problems in natural areas. These species often out-compete native wildlife for light, food and habitat.
You can help reduce the impact of invasive species by removing them from your property and by planting native flowers, trees and shrubs (they are easier to grow and attract wildlife). Learn to identify invasive species, monitor your property for signs of them and remove them, if possible.
In areas where it is appropriate, keep trees on your property whenever possible. They can help control the local climate with shade while the leaves are out and reduce winds. It also provides nesting and over-wintering sites for birds, mammals and insects.
Keep a buffer of natural vegetation between yards and natural areas. This will provide natural “corridors” for native wildlife to help them get to other natural areas.
Wildlife
If you want to discourage unwanted visits by local wildlife, here are some friendly deterrents:
- Reduce wildlife access, by keeping buildings and other shelters sealed and in good repair;
- Store garbage properly keeping it out of reach of wildlife.
House & Home
Know your property boundary. If you are not sure where your property ends and an adjacent natural area begins, feel free to contact your conservation neighbours.
Dispose of yard material properly, either by burning, composting or chipping, as appropriate. Yard waste can be a problem in natural areas because of invasive seeds that it may contain, or it can smother native vegetation if left in a pile.
Pets disturb bird nesting and breeding behaviour, and even hunt native wildlife, including endangered songbirds. It is best to either keep your pet on a lease while walking in a natural area or to restrict their movement to your property.
Try to reduce the amount of outside light at night. Artificial lights can confuse and disturb nocturnal wildlife and other animals and birds that navigate by moonlight.
Monitoring
Walk around your property in different seasons, you will be surprised at what you find! Your discoveries may be pleasant, like a nest filled with yellow warbler chicks, or you may be alerted to an impending problem, like a growing patch of garlic mustard. Also, you may notice natural incidents, like ice storms, flooding or tornadoes damage.
Getting Involved
There are many ways neighbours lend a hand protecting their local natural
areas.
Conservation volunteering is one way you can help out in your
community. Programs like the Nature Conservancy of Canada’s Conservation
Volunteers works with community volunteers to steward natural areas. And
simply by maintaining your property in a bird and wildlife friendly manner
you’ll also be supporting the ecological systems around you.
