🌿 Being an Ally to your Local Wildlife 🐿
How to help your wild neighbors make it through the summer months
Many of the species that live closest to us, like songbirds, squirrels, and rabbits (including many others), are deeply affected by our presence in their territory whether we are aware of them or not. On particularly hot days, we humans escape indoors and turn the air conditioning up. In a drought, we can still get water from our kitchen sinks. These animals scrape by trying to survive in our suburban, urban, and rural environments, just trying to make it past the current difficulty facing them, so they can live to face another.
Here are some small actions we humans can take to help these creatures that may mean the world to them, which will hardly affect us at all:
Leave out bowls of water💧
Especially when it is hot, and
especially when there hasn't been
rain for awhile.
👉🏼Tips on how to do this.👈🏼
🐱Keep cats indoors
If cats are allowed outside, keep them on a cat harness. Cats cause a
catastrophic amount of damage to native
wildlife populations, and it isn't a fair fight between the cats and
nearby wild species, because we humans medicate, feed, and care for our
cats. Cats are the most carnivorous creatures on the planet, and even
one bite from a cat can terminally infect a wild creature. If you have a
cat, keep her or him indoors.
👉🏼Check out this article about the effect of house cats on
wildlife.👈🏼
Leave out birdseed🐦
On particularly hot, dry summer days, birds can't get worms out of the earth. Both birds and squirrels enjoy birdseed, so this is a way to help multiple species at once.
🥬Keep a garden
You can plant a garden, partly for you, partly for your wild neighbors.
The plants you want to keep safe for yourself, you can protect with
chicken wire. Consider leaving some plants uncaged and
available for the nearby animals to pick
food.
👉🏼This website has some great ideas and tips!👈🏼
Support your local wildlife rehabilitator⛑
Wildlife rehabilitators often don't have enough funds or support to help
all the animals in the area that they'd like to help. Try to lighten
their load and
offer support financially, or with your
time by applying to
volunteer at the rehab clinic.
👉🏼This is a database of wildlife rehabilitators in the US.👈🏼
👉🏼Here is a similar website that also has a mobile app.👈🏼
✍🏽Vote
Keep up to date on the political topics
in your area and make your concerns known when actions are planned or
taken that will hurt the local environment. Use your voice to speak up
for the animals that can't speak for themselves, and
vote for candidates that will respect
the environment and the species in it.
👉🏼Click to learn about a voting group that fights for animal
protection in New York.👈🏼