Imagine your life without roads.
Imagine trying to get to the store to feed you and your family, but you have to try drive through dense bush, and muddy paddocks, over mountain ranges and through deserts. How much harder would it be?
Roads are our corridors. They are how we get to work, get food, get home, and get medical assistance, without these safe passages our lives would be significantly more difficult.
Well, this is what its like for wildlife when we bulldoze land and provide no safe passages for them to gather their resources.
Wildlife corridors are safe channels/ 'highways', that link the now fragmented pockets of habitats together, allowing the continuing migration, resource gathering, breeding, and general living that is required by every animal on Earth. Us included.
These corridors can be any size, from small solo projects we create in our own gardens to community endeavors and larger multi-corporation and government projects that range across several different landscapes such as forests, deserts, and grasslands.
A single garden may provide food, shelter, water, but a group or chain, provides a safe highway through our human areas.
Creating corridors for larger organisms can be very beneficial to our smaller organisms too, as they still provide those more natural channels to the things they need, but not all of our wildlife lives or travels across the floor if they can help it. Animals such as possums and birds prefer higher and /or denser routes as it minimizes how many predators may wish to have a snack. For these guys a different type of corridor should be considered, dense bushes, trees, and rope bridges make a much nicer route to food and minimize the risk of becoming the food.
Without these safety spots, wildlife populations may become isolated by these barriers we create. These corridors assist with:
. Reducing local extinction
. Improving genetic diversity
. Assist wildlife to adapt as climates change
. Help birds spread seeds
. Allow pollinators to move freely between flowering plants
. Offer escape routes during fires
The above images from DCCEEW explain beautifully the benefits of having corridors and how what we do can contribute in positive ways and provide support. It really depends on how we go about our practices.
So, now that we know what they are, what can we do to help and how do we create them?
Think about what you are doing in your garden. Before you cut down that beautiful big gum, is someone using it? When you plant new plants, are they native to your area? Will the provide shelter, food or general safety for the creatures around you?
Nature isn't flat! Mimic that in your garden, have groundcovers, grasses, climbers, small and large shrubs and, if you can, trees of different heights and shapes. Try plant things so there are blooms year round, but also host plants, so plants that may be places for eggs to be laid or young to feed on. Have a water source, especially during our harsh summers this can be the difference between life and death. Lastly, leave some 'wild'! Leave the leaf litter on the ground, leave some of those old hollow logs or dead branches. I got a stack of old bricks in my garden that houses some beautiful little skinks, I've alos left an old terracotta pot that's been broken and crumbling, this provides a home for different bugs and little lizards. We have an old stump that was long ago cut, and is now rotting an hollowing, with rocks stacked around it, this has become a haven for tiny frogs. They are simple things to us, that mean so much for so many.
We also tend to love lots of grass, but that pristine manicured lawn isn't really doing much of anything. The roos and rabbits may potentially have a nibble, but it's not providing food to anything really, nor shelter, and it leaves your critters exposed in the open. So break it up! Even if it is quite literally a 'pathway' of shrubs, a small tree or two, perhaps, if you can, a nice high rope going from one side of your yard to the other.
The best part is, you could use your verge too (ask your council first) and get your neighbours involved, if everyone did a bit, you could create a giant corridor through your community. Wouldn't that be nice instead of seeing squished ducks on the road?
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