Wildlife Management

Maintaining quality habitat and wildlife diversity is a primary goal of the park district. Many of our natural areas are reverting to forests where little to no management takes place. In these areas the natural process of succession will determine what plant and animal communities are best adapted to the site.

In order to achieve higher wildlife diversity, some areas are maintained as habitats other than forest, such as prairie, brush lands and wetlands. Areas that have already been heavily disturbed by human actions, such as farming practices, are often good locations for management. Utilizing these areas for active management allows us to increase diversity without disturbing rare or sensitive species.

One valu­able tool in wildlife man­age­ment is sur­vey­ing the plant and ani­mal species in an area to see what species are using an area. Preser­va­tion Parks is begin­ning to com­plete annual biotic sur­veys within our parks so we can inter­pret the qual­ity of our nat­ural areas.

 

Plant sur­veys that focus on the major veg­e­ta­tive com­mu­ni­ties have been com­pleted for most of our parks. By study­ing the veg­e­ta­tion types found within our parks we can infer wildlife diver­sity and habi­tat qual­ity. These sur­veys  aid in devel­op­ment and con­ser­va­tion decisions.

Bird sur­veys are con­ducted annu­ally by staff and vol­un­teers to mon­i­tor the suc­cess of our man­age­ment pro­grams. “Christ­mas Bird Counts” are con­ducted within our parks each win­ter as part of a nation­wide attempt to mon­i­tor bird pop­u­la­tions over time. Also, nest box mon­i­tors help keep track of nest box con­di­tions and record the many birds fledged from them each sea­son. if you are inter­ested in vol­un­teer­ing as a nest box mon­i­tor please con­tact the Vol­un­teer & Spe­cial Events coor­di­na­tor Saun­dra McBrearty saundras@preservationparks.com