Whether you live in urban, suburban or rural areas, you can make a positive impact on surrounding fish and wildlife populations. Our web resources are intended to give you the tools to manage your Piedmont lands and waters for greater biodiversity, productivity, and environmental quality.
It begins with providing a diversity of native plant species that offer an ongoing sequence of open flowers from early spring to fall. Early spring pollinators have the biggest challenge in finding enough nectar and pollen to provide sufficient nutrition to their young.
Helpful links related to creating habitat, particularly backyard habitats:
Find out what plants are native to the Virginia Piedmont using one of the following native plant lists.
This June, PEC led our first Wildlife Friendly Farms and Fields Tour, bringing participants out to see spots where people are actively cultivating their land for the good of native plants and wildlife.
At lunch during PEC’s Wildlife Friendly Habitats and Gardens Tour in Clarke County, the group was joined by a barn owl, a screech owl, and a red tailed hawk. The sharp-beaked raptors sent smaller birds darting in agitation among the nearby trees, even though they were perched on the hands of their human keepers. The three raptors—called Lamont, Fiona and Briar—were rescued by the Blue Ridge Wildlife Center in Millwood, but unlike most of the animals rehabilitated at the center, they couldn’t be released because of injuries that leave them incapable of surviving in the wild. So, they’ve become part of the center’s educational programs—in this case, giving people who are interested in building wildlife habitat on their land a look at some of the species that might thrive there.
Fifteen years ago, Bruce Jones’ research led him to the discovery that, in his words, “Native plants are the basic building blocks for the whole ecology of our area.” So, he and his wife Susan began the epic project of replacing invasive plants with native plants on about 87 acres of their property, now known as the Jones Nature Preserve.