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Manage Your Wooded Areas to Benefit Wildlife

Making It Grow! Minute logo

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. If you are fortunate enough to have a woods as part of  your property, you can support wildlife by management decisions. I’ve seen many newcomers who want their pines or hardwoods to be as tidy as their shrub borders – a practice that destroys many places birds, mammals and reptiles need for their lifecycle. Three types of dead wood are critical for a wildlife nurturing woodland.

Snags – dead trees that are still standing and provide sites for cavity nesting birds, logs with a large diameter that have fallen to the ground – besides protection the humid microclimate they create is critical for certain amphibians, and just plain brush – small diameter branches and twigs with accumulated leaves and vines all provide a distinct need in nature’s scheme. As we continue to loose natural habitat due to urbanization, let your property be a home to wildlife.

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Amanda McNulty is a Clemson University Extension Horticulture agent and the host of South Carolina ETV’s Making It Grow! gardening program. She studied horticulture at Clemson University as a non-traditional student. “I’m so fortunate that my early attempts at getting a degree got side tracked as I’m a lot better at getting dirty in the garden than practicing diplomacy!” McNulty also studied at South Carolina State University and earned a graduate degree in teaching there.