Now you can get your own NWF/PRN co-branded wildlife habitat sign for your property. A Certified Wildlife Habitat sign lets passersby know that you have provided a safe haven for Illinois wildlife. These habitats provide food, water, and shelter to wildlife that resides in your area or that migrates through. These habitats bring joy and beauty to your life and your community and inform the public of the requirements wildlife have to survive.
Providing habitat for wildlife is more important today than ever. Illinois wildlife is threatened by habitat destruction, climate change, and pesticide use. By growing native plants in your home garden, on your farm, at your place of worship, in a park, or in a schoolyard, you provide a safe haven for wildlife to forage, live, reproduce, and shelter.
For certification, habitat must provide:
- Food resources: such as native flowering plants that provide nectar, seeds, forage, and pollen for direct consumption. These plants also serve as structure for small invertebrates that are eaten by many animals.
- Water resources: such as creeks, ponds, or untreated water fountains or pools.
- Cover for wildlife: such as fallen trees, brush piles, fence rows, and pollinator strips.
- Places to raise young: such as fallen trees, brush piles, areas of undisturbed native vegetation, places to burrow, and large trees with cavities.
- Sustainable and ecologically sound management: including organic practices, minimal or no pesticide (herbicide, fungicide, insecticide) use, and proper use of fire or mowing practices.
Learn how to certify your habitat here.
Learn how you can incorporate habitat for pollinators and monarch butterflies into your certified wildlife habitat here.
For more information, or to speak with a staff person about pollinator habitat or certified wildlife habitat on your property, please contact Kim Erndt-Pitcher at kerndt-pitcher [at] prairierivers [dot] org.
