Building a Better Backyard for Wildlife Artwork

Our Wild Lives

Our Wild Lives takes listeners into the heart of wildlife conservation, sharing compelling stories from wildlife professionals doing critical work around the world. Your hosts Katie Perkins and Ed Arnett, of The Wildlife Society, bring you thought-provoking conversations with leading experts and emerging voices. Each episode dives into the wild lives of diverse species, explores complex ecosystems, and unpacks the urgent issues facing wildlife conservation.

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Our Wild Lives

Building a Better Backyard for Wildlife

March 13, 2026 • The Wildlife Society

0:00 | 41:19

As spring begins to emerge, so does the opportunity to support wildlife and increase biodiversity in your own yard.

In this episode of “Our Wild Lives,” TWS member Shaun McCoshum, a botanist and landscape ecologist, tells us about what has been lost from North American landscapes and how homeowners can mimic missing ecological processes to support wildlife in their own yards.

McCoshum shares practical yard strategies beyond planting native plants, including amending your soil, building structures for wildlife success, underground habitat needs for pollinators and more. Whether helping a monarch butterfly on their migration or giving your local lizards a place to retreat, your yard can be the little slice of paradise for wildlife with a few, simple changes.

“Our Wild Lives” is The Wildlife Society’s weekly podcast, sharing compelling stories from wildlife professionals doing critical work around the world. Your hosts, Katie Perkins and Ed Arnett, of The Wildlife Society, bring you thought-provoking conversations with leading experts and emerging voices. New episodes are released weekly wherever you get your podcasts.

A Blank Yard And A Big Goal

SPEAKER_01 0:00

As we all begin to thaw out from winter, you might be like me, staring at a blank yard and wondering what's supposed to go there. Well, this week, Sean McCosham, TWS member, botanist, author, landscape ecologist, I could go on, joins me to talk about what's been lost from the landscapes our backyards now sit on and what we can actually do about it to make it a little more wildlife friendly. From native plants and mulch pockets to rock stacks and backyard water sources, we get into easy steps for real results. Keep on listening to learn how even the smallest patch of ground can become something wild again. You might even walk away with a list of weekend projects like I did. I'm Katie Perkins, and this is the Our Wildlife Podcast brought to you by the Wildlife Society.

Sean’s Path To Landscape Ecology

SPEAKER_00 1:08

I got a bachelor's in biology, went on to get a master's in botany because my professors, like in my late stages of my bachelor's, are telling me that all terrestrial ecosystems are defined by the plants that are there. So you really can't do ecological work without understanding plants. So I went and got a botany degree. And when I was getting my botany degree, everyone told me, don't get a PhD, because if you get a PhD, then you'll be stuck in academia for the rest of your life. So I didn't. And then I went into the real world, the in quotations, and started working in conservation. And everyone who had the director jobs that I wanted eventually to have all had PhDs. So I did conservation for a little bit and then went back and got a PhD in landscape ecology, but through the Department of Zoology. Went on and did a postdoc for a bit, looking at solar facilities and palm eater communities. Did a whole bunch of side projects, including on monarch butterflies, various natural enemies of monarch butterflies, some reef biota and sunscreen. So I've been all over the place. And then I've bounced around a bunch across the US doing different jobs here and there. And now I work for a consulting company. And in my spare time, I continue to do research and help out people with their own properties. So in all of that, I ended up writing my most recent book, Natural Habitats and Wildlife Gardening, to help people understand really the ecology of North America before we kind of mess it up. And when I say kind of, it's a lot. And then how we can fix it, you know, like with a little bit of hope and just simple actions, like how can we replicate the things that are missing in our yards to really create solid, robust habitat that's going to really facilitate these populations that we want in our suburban areas.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

Yes, and that's exactly what we're gonna dive in today. I'm so excited for this episode because shamelessly, on my end, I just bought a house and I'm sitting here staring at a blank canvas and don't know what to do. And I have really good intentions, but I have no projects planned yet. So I hope that we can dive into this and really kind of learn. But I want to I want to take a step back and go back into your experience as a wildlife professional. I mean, you you spouted off a lot of different various experiences. And so how have those varied experiences shaped how you see our world and how all of these systems work together?

SPEAKER_00 3:18

Not to compare myself to Darwin, because Darwin is a whole other level, right? But what a lot of people don't realize is Darwin didn't come up with a theory of evolution through natural selection until he was back in Europe for like a decade. And he'd already given away all the Galapagos birds and he had to go and chase them all down. And similarly to that kind of pattern, when I was in these landscapes doing work on like Catalina Island and living with invasive bison, I wasn't thinking like, oh, how is this different to Kansas prairies? You know, but by being in that landscape and learning about it, and then eventually ending up in Oklahoma and working with bison there and being in Kansas and seeing them interact with the landscape, that's where I started to put things together. And then, you know, I graduate from my PhD in 2015 and I didn't start writing this book until 2022. So it's, you know, there's still a lag. So it's really that the lived experience helped me have knowledge that could then be compared to other aspects. And then as I'm reading more and more papers from different researchers and, you know, global experts and piecing together what they're saying is it really helped me kind of have a more holistic understanding and then having conversations with global experts and also asking them similar questions to bounce the ideas off of them. One of the great examples was we're talking about bison and and the prairies. And I was like, has anyone really looked at how bison create bee habitat? And the professor that I was talking to was just like, well, a little bit, but like, what are you? I know you're not asking that simple of a question. Like, what are you asking about? I was like, well, so like compacted trails. Um, like if I go out into the landscape right now, I will find anthophora bee nests in two track roads where ATVs or or cars have driven across. The natural allegory to that is actually bison trails. So when I've gone out and worked in areas of bison, I've looked at their trails and consistently found certain species of bees nesting in those compacted soils, right? And most people aren't thinking that way, and that's fair. I wasn't thinking that way until I had that experience to look for these things. So it's really, you know, like that um reflection on what have I learned, what am I experiencing, what am I looking at now, that's really given me this, I think, interesting perspective on the ecology, what we're looking at.

What Healthy Landscapes Used To Do

SPEAKER_01 5:33

So, Sean, you were telling me about how a lot of our systems and cycles are are really broken. What did they used to look like? What are we trying to restore our landscapes back to? Do we even know?

SPEAKER_00 5:46

That is a great question. And we don't know. For the most part, we have pieces of the information, but we don't have a complete understanding of what we were supposed to be looking at. And while I was working on this book, I mean, there was honestly many, many nights where I would finish writing because I'm working on this outside of work, and I would just be devastated by understanding the amount of devastation we have inflicted on North America because it comes from our agricultural lands, it comes from our urban sprawl, it also comes from our pollution and climate change and things that we've done to everything. So when you take a moment and step back and really look at, you know, what did North America used to look like? And what are some of the systems that were present that we don't have anymore? It's a lot. So succession is a good example. Most people learned about succession, right? So you get pioneer plants, they establish, and that allows for perennials to establish, and then you get a shrubland, and that shrubland's allowed to turn into a forest, and then some major event happens and it all resets, right? But how often do we see succession anymore? It's in our national parks, it's in a couple of our fallow properties, but it's really not intentional in our landscapes. And every time we see succession, it actually creates a bunch of resources for the next landscape. So there isn't some massive disaster that resets everything. There's all these new resources that have been created, and then a disturbance happens, like a forest fire or a beaver dam, and you lose the overall canopy, but you're still going to have tree trunks up in the sky, you're going to have massive pieces of wood that all these different organisms depend on. You know, woodpeckers, termites, bees, wasps. Bluebirds are a great example, actually. So bluebirds we almost lost, or they were having a really steep decline in their population. And it was because we removed all of the hollow wood that they were utilizing for their nests, and then starlings also came in and were out competing them. So then there was this movement to put up bluebird boxes, right? All of us have gone to some major box store, I'm sure, and seen a bluebird box. And the reason those became so prevalent is because there was actually a campaign to put up bluebird boxes, and we have successfully stopped the decline and rebounded the population a little bit. It's not successfully rebounded, but it's rebounded a little bit and it's much healthier than it was. So we were putting up bluebird boxes all across the US, right? So that's one of the systems that we've we've lost accession. We've lost one of the largest nutrient inputs into North America. So if you think about black bears, where do you think black bears historically existed in North America?

SPEAKER_01 8:27

Oh, well, I mean, I know there used to be black bears in Texas, and we don't really have them anymore. So all over, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_00 8:35

All over, yeah. And typically we think about them as a forest species, but we know that they also existed in the grasslands as well. I mean, they didn't like have major populations there, but they would still be in those spaces. But one of the major nutrient inputs to North America is that every year all these anodromous fish, the ones that mature in the oceans and then breed upstream, would move into the interior of the continent, lay their eggs, get hunted by bears, die off, get eaten by all these different animals, and then those nutrients were spread across the landscape. That's gone. Like huge, massive, like hundreds of tons of nitrogen and phosphorus from the ocean that were supposed to be upcycled into our environments is just gone. So we do have to fertilize, you know, our environments. By losing bears, we actually lose a massive part of vegetation community architecture where bears facilitate the dominance of berry-producing plants inside of the landscape because they eat them, they defecate, and their piles of scat sprout all these seeds that they eat, and they successfully sprout way more than just falling on the ground or being eaten by other animals. So we're seeing this like these huge changes, and then it just, you know, domino effects. So, okay, we've lost the berries, but oh, we've lost the bison, we've lost the eagles, and it's it really is kind of devastating to look to think about. But if once we understand that those things are missing, and then we can start to mimic those those processes inside the landscapes that we are managing ourselves, and where it would be absolutely inappropriate to reintroduce a bear or a bison or a wolf, you know, we can really help take care of the environment around us in a way that it was naturally managed before.

Mimicking Missing Cycles At Home

SPEAKER_01 10:24

Yeah, let's get into that. Let's get into, you know, not all hope is lost, I hope, is what you're telling me, and that we we can do things to hopefully restore patch, try to mimic these cycles.

SPEAKER_00 10:37

And then in addition to the things that we can do, also trying to pressure our politicians and policymakers to make decisions that do support the things outside of our landscape that will help nature is going to be an important aspect too. But that's that's not for today's conversation, but do keep that in mind. If you're looking for things to do, get involved.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

Yeah, I think your lived experiences could be like a masterclass and seeing how all of these different systems work together. Was there any experience? Um, you know, you talk about the bison to track. Was there any other kind of experience that like really taught you a lesson that has carried now into this work where you're looking at things at a large interconnected scale?

SPEAKER_00 11:17

Uh, so many. So when I was in New York, I was I was a preserve manager for 35 preserves on a private land trust. Um, all the preserves are open to people and the public for free, which was awesome. And I met my friend Mike, and he was doing some work on his property in Connecticut, and he had some trees taken down that were, you know, dangerously close to falling over, the roots had been eroded away. So he took them down, mulched them, and just had this pile sitting. Been there for about 18 months, and then he decided, oh, I'm gonna use that mulch and put it around my garden beds. So he starts digging into it and he found a snapping turtle nest with the babies sitting, you know, just outside of their eggs, waiting for the warm spring for them to come out.

SPEAKER_01 11:55

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

And he asked me, why are these turtles in a mulch pile? Like, what why would they do that? So we started, you know, looking into this. Where do where would these turtles naturally nest? And it would be old dead tree stumps that would be decaying, and that's where they're actively going for. So, with the understanding of like, okay, what's going on in nature, where would they be doing? What is this mulch now filling? What role is it filling? Because our habitats are really broken, and we typically don't want to have big, large tree stumps decaying in our front yard or our backyard. You know, that resource becomes something that the animals are relegated to use instead of wanting to use. So, like that kind of, you know, have some experience looking at a situation, answering a new question. And I think by having these kind of pieces that we can really start to put together, I've created a way that we can make simple changes in our front yards. Like instead of planting, you know, a hundred plants in one gallon pots, yes, those hundred plants, but also plan to disturb the soil and pockets so that we can have something that mimics a decaying tree or a micro shelter from a burrowing animal.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

Yes, I love that you can take your experiences on these large scales and then turn it into what we can do in our own backyards. So I guess I a question I have is what is something that you think people get wrong about backyard conservation?

SPEAKER_00 13:20

I wouldn't say necessarily that they get it wrong, as much as they just overlook it. And it's what's going on underground, really. So most people and most organizations are very much focused right now on plant native plants. 100% very important, do that. But in addition to planting native plants, that's not the only thing animals, especially our pollen leaders, depend on for their habitats. So if we just plant an area with native plants, it used to be lawn, what we've effectively done is fed everything, and a few things can hang out on those plants and survive the cold winter or the hot summer. So if we can think more holistically about where are, say, like Sphinx moths spending the winter, and then understanding that we need to do something underground for them to be able to get out of the freezing cold and into a place that they're safe, um, in a soil that's actually pliable enough for a little caterpillar body to stick its head into the ground and like excavate a burrow. Um, you know, we were able to really think more about the animals that we're trying to help and then create spaces that are both beautiful and useful for habitat.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

Yeah. In in talking to you earlier, you told me a little bit about something called an ecosystem engineer. I don't know much about that. Can you tell me what that is and and why they're so important?

SPEAKER_00 14:37

Yes. So ecosystem engineer is applied to a lot of different organisms. But in short, any animal that is heavily augmenting the landscape around it, that other creatures then become dependent on for those modifications, are going to be considered ecosystem engineers. Beavers are a good example because they dam up small streams, that creates large wetlands. All these wetlands species are dependent on the wetlands that beavers make. Most of the other animals that live in those wetlands are unable to create that dam, and therefore the ecosystem is engineered by a beaver. Bison, not necessarily thought of as an ecosystem engineer, but when you look at this very large animal that anecdotally are very itchy, they scratch on everything. They are one of the reasons that we prevent woody encroachment into grasslands when they're present, because they will literally just take it out. And the woody stuff. So they are engineering this entire ecosystem by you know maintaining grasslands. And in addition to that, they also feed on older vegetation and specifically grasses. So if you have a healthy population of bison, you're not going to have a very dominant structure of grass, but you're going to have a lot more herbaceous forbs and flowering plants that are going to grow in those areas and tolerate the trampling and them laying down and trying to create dust bats. So they also engineer this entire ecosystem. And another thing that's really interesting about bison, at least to me, is I was always told they're, you know, they're in the Great Plains. They're in, they used to exist from Texas to Canada, straight up the middle of the continent. Well, we actually have records of them almost touching California and the Sierras all the way to the Atlantic coast. You know, like they made it from Mexico up into Canada. And then there's also wood bison up in the north, too. So these species are much more widespread than we typically think of them. So then if we understand that, we can take it to our gardens and be like, okay, so old grass should actually be cut back, it shouldn't be left standing. That's not a natural system, really, if you think about it. And we should be promoting the flowering plants a little bit more than the grasses, even though we go to a grassland now without bison and see really dominated C3, C4 grasslands.

Start Small With Habitat Pockets

SPEAKER_01 16:47

Yeah, that's awesome. Okay. I want to now, this has been great big picture stuff, but I want to dive in. I want to let's say, let's use my yard. So I live in a in a dry space. I live in West Texas. I've got a blank canvas. Where Sean, where do I start? I have no idea.

SPEAKER_00 17:06

So start small. That's gonna be my first recommendation is start small. Pick a like 10 by 10 foot area to put in your first bed. And once you've done that, then start to like just grow your space and your and do it in a nice practical like time investment so that you're not trying to do everything for three months and then all of a sudden, you know, it's just it'd be too much of a lift for most people, and financially it's very expensive. So start small and to select the space that you start, look at how you utilize your yard. Like if you drive in every day, park your car, walk to your front door, and that's the majority that you see of your yard, your space that you work on should be in between your car and your front door. But if you have a place like I work from home, I have an office, I have a window that I can see out of my computer screen. So the first thing that I did is I put in our food and veggie garden right there so that I could, you know, see the plants growing and know that I can like go out there and eat. And then I'm adding in native plants around that and different ecosystems, little habitat resources that organisms can use. So it's not too distracting, right? But it's still useful and it's something that I can see. When people come over, they see that I still have this huge lawn because we moved in about a year and a half ago. I'm in down in Corpus Christi, and people are like, Oh, I assumed your yard would be, you know, full of flowers. And I'm like, Well, if we weren't in a drought and I had more time, yes, I it would be this massive lush thing, but I've only been here for a little bit. So I've only put in, you know, like seven or eight beds, including food beds. So just start small and work from there. While you're starting in that one area, though, try and include three or four resources for different wildlife. So if you dig down and plant like a gallon or a five-gallon plant, make a similar space that's going to mulch or really sandy soil. That's going to be utilized. If you compact the sandy soil, that'll be utilized by nesting bees. But if you leave it loose, it'll be utilized by a lot of burrowing moths that need to get down and pupate a little bit, like your tussock moths. A lot of beetles will get in there and pupate as well. And then if you use the mulch, it's going to attract crickets, it's going to attract moths as well. And a lot of your soil invertebrates can really kind of foster their populations, and they'll be able to establish and grow too as you expand.

SPEAKER_01 19:14

So you're telling me dig a hole and then fill it with sand or mulch?

SPEAKER_00 19:18

Yes. Yes. Next to your native plants. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

Okay. Okay. That sounds doable.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

And other things you can add is like uh stacked rocks with spaces in between them if you've got lizards. So you're in the dry west, there's lots of lizards out there. Those organisms need a place to sun, but also escape predators. And that should not be near water. But you can stack up some rocks, leave some intentional crevices, make sure it's sturdy, and the lizards will be able to like crawl in there, feel safe, come out and sun, and then put plants near them so they can have a place to forage as well.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

So I guess my question is, how big of an impact will this even have? If I'm the only one on my neighborhood block doing this, am I still making an impact by doing all this work?

SPEAKER_00 20:00

Yes, absolutely. So one of the things that I like to point out is if you ever go to Carlsbad Caverns, the closest little town in New Mexico, has the headwaters of the Pecos River. And the spring that's there used to spill out millions of gallons of water a day. But because landowners have drilled all these different wells, they have really lowered the aquifer that feeds the Pecos River. And it now gives out about five to ten gallons an hour or a minute instead of the millions of gallons a day. There's a big si or a big rock that has on there that like this was destroyed over time by all these people doing things that they didn't think had consequences. So, in the flip side, every little thing that we do has a positive impact, and we can rebuild that one at a time. Just like we've destroyed a resource, we can rebuild it the same way. So planting just one native plant is going to help a butterfly on its migration. Planting one native host plant for an organism that's going to help their population build, you know? So every little thing that you do around your house that's intended to help nature, as long as it's actually helping nature, you know, it's going to have a positive thing. If, you know, you do something that you intend to help everybody and then you spray it with pesticide, you did a bad job, don't do that, get out. You know.

HOA-Friendly Design That Still Helps

SPEAKER_01 21:10

Yeah. Okay. So I think I could do that. I can plant a few native plants, I can get some rocks set up, I can dig a couple holes, do some sand and things. I don't have an HOA, but let's say I did. And let's say now I've made my HOA mad because maybe they don't like my native plants. It are those things connected. Can I have a well-maintained, nice yard? That also helps wildlife.

Wildlife Society Membership Break

SPEAKER_00 21:35

Absolutely. And HOAs are one of the things I'd like to work with, because for me it's a puzzle. But I have honestly never found an HOA that was completely against native plants. So even in the acceptable list of things to plant, there's typically one or two natives on there. If they want straight lines, we can orderly plant our plants like in equal spaces. There's lots of beautiful native plants. That have gorgeous flowers. There is this idea in conversation when we talk about natural habitats where people are like, oh, a messy yard's a good yard. Yes, but also that's a real disservice to nature. Like, let's stop calling it messy. You can have a perfectly square, log-lined pile of detritus inside of it, you know, that that is going to look nice on the outside and be very usable by organisms in the area. You can have perfect lines of native plants and the animals are not going to care. There's this new messaging coming around like messy is good, straight lines aren't aren't natural or these like organization, nature isn't ordered. And that's a falsehood in and of itself. So in the drier areas of the western United States and parts of Mexico, you can see where there are straight lines from where the rocks have eroded and they're they're sedimentary, and the harder rocks stay, and then you got these loose sands, and you get perfect lines of vegetation meandering through the landscape. Like it happens in nature. We can adopt some of that to our yard. And we also don't have all the organisms that are in a healthy ecosystem. So, yes, if your HOA has straight lines, strict borders, short lawns, you can do all those things, but you can still have native plants in the area. I have never once come across an HOA, not saying it doesn't exist, that is like you have to spray your yard every week with this pesticides and kill everything. Like, that's typically not the level that it is. And you can always work with HOAs too. So you can bring in, you know, like, oh, they have this list of 12 species, but you want to plant a Cirxus Canadiensis, which might not be on there, you know, sell it. It's a beautiful eastern red wood, has gorgeous flowers in the spring, big leaves that shade you in the summer. It's a great plant to add. It's gorgeous, it's in the landscaping horticultural industry. You know, there's there's very few things that you're gonna be stuck with and not be able to amend and still help nature and meet these requirements.

Soil Fixes Snags And Sunflowers

SPEAKER_01 23:59

Stay with us, we'll be right back. Are you starting your career in wildlife conservation? Well, you don't have to do it alone. Join the Wildlife Society to connect with professionals who understand the challenges and opportunities of your first years in the field. Enjoy the same benefits as our regular membership, plus free access to our Early Career Professionals Working Group, a community focused on mentorship, skill building, and professional growth. Take the next step in your wildlife career at wildlife.org slash membership. Yeah, so Sean, I want to pick your brains. What are you doing in your yard to improve? You talked about it a little bit earlier, but maybe in past yards you've had, I know you just moved to this house. What's some what's some steps that you think you might be taking this spring to make your yards a little more wildlife friendly?

SPEAKER_00 24:47

Okay, so here in Corpus Christi, we have well, I'm in the coastal plains of the Gulf, and we have really clay soils, like um like professional clay that you would throw on a wheel level. And so some of the things that I'm going to be doing is amending the soils that are around my house to better match that clay because we have a lot of fill that was put around when the house was built. Um, there's some massive cobbles that were put in, so I want to kind of move those into a certain area to allow some infiltration and then create rock stacks on top of that. I also want to trim up our trees a little bit because in the wild, dead limbs are typically taken out by, you know, big old bears or woodpeckers pecking away at them or breaking them. And here in the urban environment that I live in now, I have this tree and there's a lot of dead branches in it, but there's nothing helping clear them out. And then for once I get that cleaned up, I then want to add bigger snags that will actually attract beetles and like uh carpenter bees so that their populations can safely persist in the neighborhood and keep on moving that way. In the past, so before we lived in this house, I lived in Odessa, Texas, which is super dry. It's near desert. It's in the Llano Estacado, which is a grassland. And out there, I like slowly added in drought-resistant plants and established them slowly so that it wasn't like wasting a bunch of water and I could pay attention and modify things. And then when it got too hot, started modifying the soil so I could have nesting bees and did actually a couple experimental setups to see if we could improve soils for specific species. And unfortunately, we moved before I could really get any data on it. What are you gonna do on your yard?

SPEAKER_01 26:25

Oh, you know, so I I don't know. I guess I I have a lot that I want to do. So we I need to tear out some trees and things in the backyard. I have these big boxwoods in the front yard that I want to get rid of to make room. A lot of my yard is concrete. So if you have any uh tips for that, so my whole front yard is pretty much all concrete, and then half of my backyard is concrete. So, what are some creative ways that you think I could incorporate maybe planter boxes or or things like that? Because right now, as it stands, my house is not wildlife friendly at all.

SPEAKER_00 27:04

Yeah, with that much concrete, first thing I'd recommend is just get one of those giant planters, like the plastic planters from any of your big box stores or even a local pot store that look like a half barrel, drill holes in it, make it really good soil in there, and or it doesn't even have to be good soil, use some topsoil, a little bit of potting soil, plant some sunflowers. Sunflowers are big, fast, they support a bunch of organisms, and they like really feed the neighborhood while you're getting everything else established.

How To Tell It’s Working

SPEAKER_01 27:33

Yeah, I'm so excited. It's finally warming up where I am, so I'm like itching to get out there and get going. So this is perfect timing. How will I know when these projects that I want to take on, how will I start to know that they're working?

SPEAKER_00 27:46

They'll be almost immediate, to be honest. So once you get sunflowers growing, the first thing that typically shows up are aphids. And if you just like sit as the sun is setting or the sun is rising, depending if you're an early riser, and you get it so the sun lights up the plant from the back, like what you're looking at, you'll start to see all the insects flying around it. And it's pretty impressive because you're at if you look at it from like sunlight directly over it, you won't really see the animals as much. But if you see it as a backlit, you'll see it moving around. Um, once it starts to bloom, then you're going to see bees and butterflies come in. Sunflowers are also the host plant for like painted ladies or American ladies, and they'll they are migratory and they have a huge range, so they'll come in and show up in your yard too. So you'll start to see things pretty quickly. Um, another thing that you can do is add in compost. Compost decaying things inside of our suburban areas or our urban lots, not something we typically see, but so many organisms are dependent on some type of death and decay, including dead wood. But if you add a compost pile, you're gonna start bringing in flies, you're gonna bring in a couple beetles, and that's gonna feed your lizards, that's gonna allow the lizards or like their populations to grow. And lizards love concrete because of the sand that goes underneath it. So they they'll lay their eggs in those areas, so you'll you'll be working to what's already like there in the landscape for you.

Feral Cats And Safer Feeders

SPEAKER_01 29:08

Yeah, that's so exciting. Well, Sean, one concern I have is the neighborhood that I've moved into has a lot of feral cats, and I'm not sure how to approach that situation. I don't want to bring critters in and then put them in a bad spot. Do you have any advice for that?

SPEAKER_00 29:23

Feral cats are so hard. Public conversations about it are so heated. People really love their cats and the ecosystem hates them, right? And those of us who understand that really don't want cats to be around. So it'll really depend on what your source is. So if it's someone feeding the cats, we can try and educate them. Um, if it's just that there's a huge population because the resources are around, we can try and eliminate some of those resources, but also work with any of the state or federal agencies that have some oversight on those populations. For your yard, personally, make sure that if you decide to feed birds, like with a bird feeder, they're they're high up. There's no good purchase for the cats to be on. If you use a seed feeder, it should land in an area that can be swept up so that there's not a lot of bird seed on the ground. In Texas, we've got a lot of doves, as you know, we've got three or four species that'll be in the area, and they love to be on the ground. So again, you want to make sure that there's like clear sight lines and nothing really for the cats to hide in. With the amount of concrete that you're talking about, though, you just make sure you've got bigger pots and don't allow too much trailing of plants over the edges. And that should help kind of dissuade the cats from sitting there and being able to successfully predate on the birds if you're trying to promote them. For the lizards, as many shelters as possible. They're still going to try and hunt those animals, but you know, the more shelters you provide, the more likely they'll be able to get away from the cats.

Why Home Conservation Matters

SPEAKER_01 30:49

That's great advice. Thank you. It's so interesting. I love your perspective on this of you thinking at this landscape scale that we talked about earlier and thinking of all the different ways that I can really try to create a little haven in my own backyard. What is it that really inspired you to pursue this? What do you love so much about at-home conservation?

SPEAKER_00 31:12

So I mean, I just I like nature, right? There's this idea that humans aren't disconnected from nature, but we are nature itself defending itself. And I kind of that's when I heard that, that one resonated with me. Like, oh no, this isn't like some weird quirk about me. Like, I'm actually doing what I'm supposed to be doing, right? We should be protecting our landscapes around us. But I think some of the first experiences I had even as a child, like I accidentally broke a few federal laws, moved some amphibians around, and reintroduced them to our suburban environment where I grew up in Oakland, California. And, you know, like when we go camping, I always liked going out and like looking for animals and seeing them. And then when I go home, it's like, oh, yeah, we've got morning doves, we've got, you know, trains going on in the background. But once I started learning that you could create spaces for animals and kind of facilitate them, it really just became something that I would do while I was gardening. My grandma taught me, you know, plant pest plants so your organisms around can can go attack those plants and then they'll stay off your food plants. Come to find out that's called integrative pest management or IPM, and there's whole, you know, degree plants set aside that. So it's really just understanding for me, nature in general, and then trying to support it in a way that I enjoy seeing it and can also benefit from it. I like to eat plants, I like to eat food that tastes good, and it's kind of nice to be able to step outside and be like, oh, I grew some basil or like oh, some blackberries are you know ready to eat? So I think it was really just being a part of the system we're supposed to be and not stuck in sterile houses or dust-filled houses, however, you want to look at it all.

SPEAKER_01 32:52

What's one idea from your book that you really hope sticks with readers if they read it?

SPEAKER_00 32:57

Probably the mulch pits, like just little tiny pockets of mulch inside of any garden. Um, there's so many things, but like one thing that really resonates with people when I talk to them is do you remember even 10 years ago, like how loud crickets were when you go outside and they're they're disappearing. And you go out now and it's like, oh, there's a cricket. No, there should be lots of crickets. And if you put in just these little pockets of organic material in your in your yard, crickets will go in there and it provides a little bit of fungus for them to eat, it provides nice little hibernacula for them. And you know, the the places that I put them around our yard, we had crickets almost immediately. But the first couple weeks that we were here didn't have them in, and you could barely hear crickets in the distance, right? So I hope people will pick up just making these little pockets of soil in their yard, but specifically the organic, so that we can really facilitate the crickets, but also it's good for lightning bugs, it's good for moths. Then the other thing is reduced pesticide use, which is messaged by a number of organizations, but I talk about it too. It's part of the research that I've done. But our pesticide use is off the truck. It's we don't need to kill everything. Like, if you don't want to be outside and have bugs around you, then don't live in a house and don't spend time outside, you know, right? Um, some people might disagree with that, but for me, I'm just like, stop trying to landscape the earth into an inch of its life. Just let it enjoy it for what it is.

Crevice Gardens And Hidden Shelters

SPEAKER_01 34:23

Yeah, I love the mulch pits. That's like a perfect weekend. I, you know, like I'm not the handiest person, but I can go outside and I can dig a hole and I can buy a bag of mulch and I can put it in there. So I love that nice little actionable tip. Do you have any other weekend projects that people can take on that's you know aren't aren't too expensive, don't take a whole lot of time.

SPEAKER_00 34:43

Yeah, so the book is full of them, actually. And I tried to break everything down into adjustable, you know, weekend projects if you do anything. But even for me, like I I prefer to get something done in about two hours. Something get it done less than two hours, even better. One of the coolest projects, I think, is called a crevice garden. Have you heard of these before?

SPEAKER_01 35:02

I haven't. Tell me more.

SPEAKER_00 35:04

Okay, so Denver Botanic Garden has like the best one in the world so far that I have seen. And they have these giant rocks and they're they're set into the ground at little at slants, and what they do ecologically is create deep caverns of soil that are directing water when it hits the surface from rain to go into the soil. And then it runs off the surface that's hard and impervious, hits the soil, and then goes down. So the pockets of soil are actually getting more water for the area when in a natural rain event than if they were just exposed. They're also creating microclimates for like sheltered areas for ceilings to establish that keep the soil kind of cool, while then exposing the plant shoots to the heat of the day or the wind, and that's great too. So you can create these little crevice gardens on a much smaller scale using flagstone cement blocks that are you know old and discarded. Don't use new ones because that'll change your pH of your soil. But you can put these rocks in at a slant, and if you orient them so that the long ways go east-west, you'll also have a north-south gradient for shade. And you can have wetter soils that will promote species that need a little bit more water, but also works really well on drought. So you can put these in, they're gorgeous. There are some that different landscapers have developed that are like six feet tall. So rocks come out of the ground six feet, and then they have these ridges of soil and they plant them with succulents. But if you do it on just your landscape level side, you can get these gorgeous big plants and really help facilitate a more drought-resistant landscape that is architecturally gorgeous, very stunning and super different than anyone else in your neighborhood.

SPEAKER_01 36:35

I love that you mentioned cement blocks because we dug out like five or six cement blocks and bricks, and I just have this pile of stuff sitting. And now, Sean, I have a perfect project to take on this weekend to put those to good use instead of them going to the landfill. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 36:51

You can also put them underground. So if you create pockets of space underground, you're going to mimic burrowing animals, another ecosystem engineer. And those shelters are important for tons of amphibians, especially like toads that are going to be out in your area. Spadefoots like to have these hollow spaces and they like to be a little bit damp. So if you do the crevice garden with those and create some pockets as well of empty space or organic material, you can do it all right next to each other and hide it, which is great. But the animals will be able to utilize it and then show up when they when they want to emerge. It's great.

A Neighborhood That Gets It Right

SPEAKER_01 37:24

I love it. So, Sean, I want you to imagine, say, a neighborhood in 20 years that gets backyard conservation right. What does it look like? What does it sound like?

SPEAKER_00 37:36

So it it would look like a staggered forest with mature trees, shrubs, and lots of herbaceous plants as well. There would be lots of butterflies, moths, insects, singing birds all throughout the year, unless you're in a place that's really cold. But even then, there should still be birds. Preferably your neighbors are sharing plants because that's always fun. You're like, oh, I grew this, and then you're like, I gotta have some extra and you hand it off. But in addition to that, there would just be beautiful, lush structure and very few lawns. There could be some mode areas, like there's a reason to have a lawn. Like I even have this in the book. Like my dog loves to go outside, she lays in the sun for 10 to 20 minutes, she hitches herself on the grass and she comes back in. So there will always be a three to five foot mode space that she will be allowed to do that. People who, you know, their kid wants to be a quarterback and they they need that larger piece, go for that. But every yard does not need a big old lawn. So there should be much less lawn inside of that overall landscape and a lot more shade, unless you're in the Great Plains, then it should all just be grassland.

Access To Water And Final Tips

SPEAKER_01 38:44

Okay. Well, do you have any any last-minute tips, any things you want to leave the listeners with about creating a little bit more habitat for wildlife in their own backyard?

SPEAKER_00 38:55

Yes. The last thing I would leave people with is to think about access to any space that you create. So if we go back to the idea of raised beds, that's a new, not a new fad, but it's a fad right now. People really want these raised beds. If organisms need to get into that space, like crawl around, if you've if the material that's used is not something that's easily climbable by the species you're trying to support, we need to find ways to make access, which can be simple ramps, stacks of rock or stacks of wood, but that'll work. Toads are a really good example because they are such poor climbers. So if you are in an area and you want to support toads, like understand that a three-inch gap, like our curves, can be dangerous for them. So add little ramps and access. And this also counts for water, too. Quite often people are like, oh, I added a water resource, I added a bird bath. That's great. Bird baths are fantastic, but for all the things that are fossorial, they live on the ground, they can't climb very well. There should be also some access to water on the ground. And it doesn't have to be a permanent situation. It could literally just be a little divot that holds water after an area's been watered or a little bit of rain. It just holds it for 24 to 48 hours. And then if that water drains out, that's great. But it's given it a little bit more time to allow animals to access it and hydrate.

SPEAKER_01 40:09

Well, awesome. Sean, was there anything else that we haven't touched on that you feel like we might be missing from this conversation?

SPEAKER_00 40:14

Everything? No. There's just ecology is so robust, right? There's so there's so much we could talk about. But I think we've done a really good job about introducing people to this idea of thinking about their landscapes as they may have existed back when ecosystem engineers were present and robust throughout the landscape, and then ways that we can recreate it.

SPEAKER_01 40:35

Well, Sean, thank you so much. I know that I am just so excited to go over to my new house and try all of these different tips and tricks that you gave us. And I hope the people listening found a lot of things too. If you want to dive more into Sean's book, we've got that link down below, and I believe we have a discount code for you as well. So if you're like me and you're gonna take on some home projects this year to make your yard a little bit nicer and a little bit kinder to wildlife, there's a good place to start. So, Sean, thank you so much for joining us today.

SPEAKER_00 41:03

Yes, thank you so much for having me. It was a lot of fun.