 Tree Benefits
Our Urban Forest is Home to Wildlife
Urban forests provide habitat for wildlife, conserve soil and support biodiversity. Our hardwood hammocks produce fruit that birds, both resident and migratory depend upon, and also serve as the principal habitat for a number of threatened and endangered species including bald eagles, fox squirrels, piliated woodpeckers, otters, bobcats, gopher tortoises, and Schaus swallowtail butterfly.
Upland forests shelter native mammals, birds and reptiles and riparian treescapes along waterways and riverbanks serve as vital connectors for movement of wildlife between habitats. Even the green spaces among our parks, cemeteries, botanical gardens and beaches host a generous cross-section of land and avian species. Increasingly, these animals are threatened by habitat loss or fragmentation (isolated, unconnected habitat areas), which either removes their sustenance or abandons them to languish in remote treed pockets. When wildlife species are corralled and their natural range is reduced, they also suffer reduced breeding opportunities and limited gene pool diversity.
Forests and plant biodiversity is not simply a preference, but a necessity. Scientists estimate that as much as 2/3 of all terrestrial wildlife is found in forest ecosystems. This is a profound habitat, one that requires diversity in order to maintain necessary resilience to disturbance, disease and stagnation. |