Be a Backyard Scientist-Naturalist

From Beautiful Wildlife Garden

Becoming an ecologist of your yard, your habitat will help you understand better and as a result, provide the best habitat possible for your specific yard. Perhaps just as important or even more so, you will gain knowledge and data that can be useful to others such as neighbors, the city or conservation organizations.

Participate in Citizen Science
You’re not alone, there are dozens of citizen science projects already ongoing throughout North America. Among the many include:

• The Lost Lizard Project of Los Angeles
• The Great Sunflower Project - Join the Hunt for Bees
• The Great Backyard Bird Count - Coming Up in February
• Celebrate Urban Birds - For City Dwellers
• FrogWatch USA
• Witness for Wildlife
• The Lost Ladybug Project
• Firefly Watch
• Wildlife Watch

Participate in them and if you have a local species of concern or interest, start your own project, start local groups, be a local citizen scientist.


Share and Teach
With your expertise, data and experience, share the knowledge with your neighbors, local organizations such as Audubon, parks department, the city or anywhere it can be beneficial. Be confident with your recordings and data to speak at public hearings or to encourage other local homeowners and organizations to participate, especially when discussing a wildlife species on a watch list or threatened status.

With your knowledge you will arm yourself with data to help wildlife not only in your yard, but in your neighborhood, region or in fact the entire world. With many citizen scientists and their data, city planning departments may change that next road placement or have to protect that wetland from a shopping center.

Your data may help a conservation organization or Department of Transportation, plan and design a suitable wildlife crossing for the proper species. In addition, your knowledge and observations will also help to continually improve your own habitat by observing what works and what doesn’t. So go observe, study and record!

This was an excerpt from the entire article at BeautifulWildlifeGarden.com


About the Author:
Kelly Brenner writes The Metropolitan Field Guide, a blog for ideas, thoughts and resources for the design of urban wildlife habitat. She has a landscape architecture degree from the University of Oregon and has studied and watched wildlife from a very young age in the great Pacific Northwest.

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