Surface Water Management Division
Home Wildlife Habitat
Home wildlife habitat is much more than feeders and bird houses.
Good home wildlife habitat establishes the ongoing natural processes that wildlife need. Ecologists often refer to these processes as occurring “across space and time”.
We are lucky to live in one of the most wildlife-rich places in the world. Many of the wildlife and plants found in and around Snohomish County's streams and rivers are found nowhere else!
You cannot force salmon and other wildlife to visit your property, but you can influence the natural processes that will make your property attractive to them. Once restored, these natural processes will provide the food and structure that wildlife need for generations to come. They even work if you forget to fill the feeder or clean the bird house!
If you get the ball rolling, the structure will build and sustain itself, food will grow itself, and wildlife will come!
For example, young salmon depend on mayflies for food, mayflies depend on clean water and leaf litter in streams, trees and shrubs along streams help ensure clean water and provide food for mayflies, and you can control whether or not there are healthy trees and shrubs along your stream.
Tinkering with nature? Yes and no. By doing some of the things describes in these pages, you are indeed influencing natural processes and structures. Keep in mind, however, that you are likely influencing processes and structures that have already been significantly altered by human activity. There are very few lowland Puget Sound streams that have not been altered by logging, development, roads, and farming in the last 150 years. Streams are impacted by human activity even today.
By ensuring that streamside activities have beneficial impacts instead of harmful impacts, and that they enhance habitat-forming natural processes instead of stopping them, you can improve stream health and wildlife habitat for generations to come.
The most important things you can do to create good wildlife habitat are also the most important things you can do for your stream:
- Plant lots of trees.
- Wash your vehicle at a carwash.
- Avoid using pesticides and herbicides.
- Avoid using lawn fertilizers.
- Pick up your pet waste (put it in a plastic bag in the trash).
- Leave your streambanks natural.
- Learn to love beavers (they’re good for salmon).
- Keep pets and livestock out of streams.
- Plant native plants.
- Walk along your stream with a Watershed Steward.
Structure in Home Wildlife Habitat
Layers in Home Wildlife Habitat