is one of the world's leading teaching and research hospitals for wildlife and conservation medicine, (dramatic music) providing state-of-the-art veterinary care for more than 3,000 wild animals each year.

(dramatic music) The Center of draws on lessons learned from each patient admitted, to teach the world to care about and care for wildlife and the environment.

(water splashing) (birds chirping) >>Funding for "Untamed" is brought to you by.

(water splashing) (birds chirping) (dramatic music) (gentle music) >>I've always considered myself to be very blessed, I actually live in the woods.

I have the trees coming up right beside my house, I'm surrounded by beautiful wildlife, birds, beautiful plants, natural growth, all types of wild and natural things.

But not everybody's so lucky, and a lot of folks want to have that proximity to nature, that relationship with natural things.

And what do they do?

They build themselves a backyard habitat.

(upbeat music) Now a backyard habitat includes four basic things, it includes food for animals, water for animals, shelter for animals, or a place where they can build their homes, and also safety, where they can not only carry out their own lives, but raise their young.

And in creating that habitat in your backyard, you'll find that you're helping all kinds of wildlife.

Wildlife you might not even expect to be near your home, but you'll also be helping yourself.

Spending time in a backyard habitat can help you forget the stresses of the day.

It can improve your quality of life and certainly the ambiance in which you live.

And it's just not that hard.

(gentle music) Building a backyard habitat can really be a joyful experience, from designing what you want, planning the types of plants and flowers you're going to install, designing and installing your water feature, or bird bath, or water fountain for the animals.

(gentle music) All the way through, it's a learning experience.

It's important however, to be sure that all of the elements in your backyard habitat compliment one another, and that you're not creating inadvertently a hazard for wildlife.

One of the best ways to see that you get it right, is to seek the advice of an expert.

(upbeat music) >>Native plants are really important.

And a lot of times people want plants around their house that the insects don't eat, and that they always look nice and are blooming constantly.

And that usually means that they're coming from far away because all of the plants that are native to this area, (gentle music) there's a whole system that works together.

So the trees grow and they get insects that will come and eat their leaves, but as long as they don't completely defoliate them, the leaves are gonna come back and the birds are able to eat the insects that are on those plants, and that's really important to keep that whole thing going.

If you put in non-native plants, there's no insects for the birds to eat basically, they need to feed their young a lot of insects.

(gentle music) If your trees aren't supporting those insects, then the birds aren't there, and some of the statistics that we have out are really sobering.

Since 1970, we've lost almost 30% of our bird populations, and lost 3 billion birds.

(gentle music) A small thing that you could do is just to put native plants in your landscape and just maybe not worry about so much if it gets chewed or if something else comes along.

But if you get the wild plants in, you will get the animals because they all evolve together, and they're important to have the whole system working as a cycle.

(gentle music) So we're here in the mountains side of Virginia, and if we go over the mountains, we're in the Piedmont, and there's a lot of things that are the same but then there's some plants that are different, as you go further east to the coast the whole landscape changes.

So if you bring plants that are good for the coastal area and you put them here, they're not going to do so well.

So what you wanna find out is how do you know, what plants should be here?

So aside from going out in the woods and looking at that, there's a lot of resources online.

(gentle music) One of the things you have to make sure is that these plants are raised with just regular soil and not in any kind of pesticides added or herbicides or anything like that.

You can start small with just a few things and make a big change and keep adding it every year.

(gentle music) Having a tree foundation is really important, and then you want shrubs, so that, that they have some cover and understory plants, that's kind of difficult because we have a lot of deer pressure and deer love shrubs, so that can be challenging, and I have a lot of trouble here, getting something that the deer don't eat.

There are a few, but not many.

(gentle music) And then having a lot of high density plant material that supports insect life, goldenrods, asters, milkweed, all those things that are really great additions.

If the birds can forage for their own natural food, it's a much better thing, that's what they're accustomed to doing.

So we have sparrows around here that just work all of these beds, they just go in there and they kick their feet, and they're looking for seeds that have fallen off from the year's growth.

(birds chirping) (gentle music) And you know, we have shrubs over there that have berries that are eaten by the birds and they know when to do it.

You provide the native food and they will take care of it.

(gentle music) Water source is critical, especially a clean water source.

I have a real simple set up here, it's just a plastic container that I bring in and out.

I make sure it's clean because it gets it gets pretty foul during the course of the day.

And yeah, I mean you can do as many things as you want, you can have a drip pond, or you can have a heated water source.

There are many different ways, but just having that, it's really important, especially in a drought situation, sometimes in the summer, they need it.

(gentle music) The National Wildlife Federation has developed a program, where you can get your backyard certified as wildlife friendly.

'Cause again it's you want just not just birds, when you get birds, you get everybody else, and they all need to be welcomed.

So they have a procedure where you can, that you go online, and you can answer the questions that they have, and then there's a $20 fee.

And they'll send you a sign that you can put up in your yard, that says that you're a certified habitat for wildlife.

(gentle music) And the good part about that is that your neighbors can see that, you can work up maybe a more community feel for, "I've got extra plants, would you like some?"

And kind of spread it out because just having one little yard isn't gonna help, you need like the whole community to really get behind this and make a few changes to benefit the wildlife.

(gentle music) In fact, if you could bring the backyard into the front yard and have the whole yard be a habitat for animals, it would be great.

You can, I mean, you can also use it as a garden to grow things for yourself and for wildlife.

And it would send a message to people that it's okay to grow things and not have grass everywhere, 'cause grass is not providing, (gentle music) it's not providing habitat for anybody.

I have endless hours of entertainment and it keeps me busy, and it's like, I never have to think about what I need to do, it's like I don't spend much time inside watching television, I'm outside and I get to see, you know, owls come through, we've had cedar waxwings come through and eat all the berries off the cedar trees.

And you know, I'm out moving swarms of bees around and seeing what new things have showed up as does the year progresses.

So it's an endless source of entertainment for me, no man, it's not work, it's entertainment.

(upbeat music) >>Regardless of the size of your backyard habitat, it's relatively easy to include all four elements, food, water, shelter and safety, for the insects, birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians that visit you.

But you need to be sure to avoid hazards that can pose a threat to the animals you're attracting, and can spoil your natural paradise.

(upbeat music) >>The Wildlife Center of Virginia receives thousands of wild animals that have been found by members of the public in their own backyards.

These animals may come from rural, urban or suburban environments, but in almost every case, they've been injured due to some circumstance related with human beings.

Many injuries to wildlife in backyards occur due to the presence of non-natural structures or activities in the habitat, domestic dog and cat attacks, window collisions, and lawnmower interactions tend to be the most common circumstances of admission for these animals.

Unfortunately, it is common for birds to fly into windows and become injured.

Usually this occurs in places where large glass windows are close to habitats that attract songbirds and have things like bird feeders and bird baths in them.

(gentle music) Birds collide with glass because they see the reflection as open airspace through which they can fly, or because they see themselves in the glass and are trying to fight with what they perceive as a competitor.

(upbeat music) At the Wildlife Center of Virginia, we've come to understand the potential long-term effects that a window collision can have on a bird, ocular trauma, fractures, or other major internal injuries that may not be immediately obvious, could cause pain and suffering, and potentially death for that patient down the road.

For this reason, any bird that's had a collision with a solid object, like a window, should be rescued if possible, and transported to a wildlife rehabilitator or a veterinarian for care.

(gentle music) If window collisions have been a concern where you live, there are a variety of options for reducing this risk, move bird feeders and bird baths away from large windows, and increase glass visibility by applying one of a variety of commercially available or do it yourself options.

(upbeat music) Other common scenarios that present a danger for wildlife in our backyards, include regular pest control methods, things like glue traps, rodenticides and landscape mesh, can present serious hazards for wild animals.

Just last year, I responded to a call to remove three live adult snakes from a single piece of landscape netting.

To minimize the risk of injury to wildlife near your home, eliminate the use of toxic or hazardous materials in your backyard and carefully consider any potential dangers that might be introduced to wildlife, that's attracted to that space.

(upbeat music) >>Most injured wildlife come to the Wildlife Center of Virginia, due to some sort of human interaction.

Those actions aren't always necessarily intentionally malicious to wildlife.

However, wildlife become the secondary targets or affected secondarily by something a human has done.

Homeowners often want to employ a variety of pest management options, that could be using spring mousetraps, that could be putting out rat or mouse bait, or using something like a glue trap.

Well, these might be effective for removing the pest, there is no way to ensure just the pest goes in that trap, or to eat that food, or in that glue trap.

And other non-target species can be affected certainly directly by those things, as well as secondarily by those things, by consuming, for example, a rat that had consumed mouse bait.

The way most of these poisons work is they act as an anticoagulant, which basically makes it so the blood will no longer clot, and these animals essentially bleed out, once that has happened and the mouse or rat has died, that becomes a really easy meal for a red-tailed hawk or an eagle in the area.

And then that red-tailed hawk or eagle might ingest that mouse or rat, and all the rodenticide that's inside of it.

Now your red-tailed hawk or eagle is going to suffer the exact same fate as that mouse or rat, in that their blood will not clot any longer, and they will also bleed out.

(gentle music) When a homeowner decides to use a glue trap to try and catch a pest, whether that be a rodent or an insect, the predator of those species are often drawn to those glue traps as well, as stuck to that glue trap is an ample source of food for them.

The things I think of most commonly that gets stuck would be small insectivorous birds that are going to try and eat the bugs that are stuck on the glue trap.

And then as well as snakes, that are also sometimes drawn to the insects stuck on the glue trap, as well as rodents that may become stuck on the glue trap.

(gentle music) Regardless of what you're using a glue trap for, whether that be to catch rodents or insects, they are completely inhumane.

The way the animals die, when they are caught on glue traps, is by dehydration and starvation.

That is not considered a humane death for any animal, whether it be a target species or a accidental species that was captured.

When an animal gets stuck on a glue trap, we encourage the finder of that animal to bring the entire glue trap into us at the Wildlife Center.

And when they arrive, we're going to immediately assess all the animals on that trap.

Oftentimes multiple animals can be caught on the trap by the time the finder notices that to bring it into us.

At that point, we're gonna start trying to remove the animal that is most severely affected first, and how we do that is we very, very carefully remove that animal from the glue trap while using mineral oil to unstick them.

(upbeat music) Well, that sounds very straightforward, it's actually really, really complicated.

And even in the process of removing them, you can cause further injuries such as skin tears, dislocations and fractures.

(gentle music) After the patient has been removed from the glue trap, you're left with another problem, that patient is now completely contaminated with mineral oil.

This becomes a problem, especially with the small songbirds we see, they require their feathers to be clean and in perfect condition in order to maintain their temperature appropriately.

Once that oil is all over them, they can't do that.

Now we have to put the patient through a really stressful series of baths, to get them clean again and get their feathers back in appropriate condition.

(gentle music) Well, having a backyard habitat for wildlife can be really fun and a great way to enjoy your local wildlife, it can also cause harm to the local wildlife.

For example, if you have a bird feeder in your backyard, the birds that frequent that bird feeder could be seen by you and your family and birders in your area perhaps, however, bird feeders also can be a source of illness for wildlife.

An example, I think of really commonly, is if you don't keep your bird feeder very clean, the animals can come to that bird feeder ingest seed that could be moldy or have bacteria in it, and basically get what humans would consider really severe food poisoning.

(gentle music) Bird feeders also serve as a source of disease transmission, so for example, if one bird is sick and comes to your bird feeder, and three other birds come there at the same time, they can get his illness and then bring it back to other bird feeders and spread illness around your community.

My advice to anyone who is maintaining a backyard habitat, would be to be really mindful about how your actions could affect your local wildlife.

If you're considering having a pest removal company come in, or you're considering doing pest removal at home, make sure you're doing that in a really humane way, and in a way that's not going to affect non-target species.

If you have big glass windows out back, I recommend putting a deckle of some sort on those windows, such that birds can recognize that as a solid object and decrease the chance of window strike events.

And then if you're a person who has a bird feeder and enjoys feeding the birds, certainly make sure you're cleaning your bird feeder regularly and monitoring for any signs of illness in the birds, coming to your bird feeder.

If you do notice sick birds at your bird feeder, certainly giving the Wildlife Center a call is a really good first step, as well as taking that bird feeder down at that point, cleaning it, leaving it down for a little bit and then putting it back up in the future.

(upbeat music) >>My backyard habitat includes a wooded area, as well as an area we created around a home we built, about three years ago to make more of a natural landscape.

And I can explain that a bit more, by saying my husband and I made the decision to retire to an area in Greene County, Virginia, that's on a top ridge of one of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

So it was naturally wooded, (upbeat music) we have that in our favor, except that the area around the home we built was all dirt when we moved in, we decided we don't want a manicured lawn, we want to naturalize it.

And I had a passion for developing a bird, bee, butterfly garden.

And so I set out to do that and create more of a meadow effect, with native perennials and native plants.

And we also dug a pond, (gentle music) it's approximately 11 by maybe six feet in our clearing.

And we began then to put up various sized bird houses, bluebird boxes, there were natural piles of wood and leaf litter, so we had all, a lot of the components available that are required for a successful habitat.

The reason we chose to retire to that location was so we could spend our later years just enjoying the natural environment.

And I feel humans are so often intruders on natural habitat, that I felt a responsibility to create one and for pleasure and enjoyment.

(upbeat music) And also I very highly believe in something the Wildlife Center of Virginia teaches, and that's the One Health concept, that the interaction between the health of humans and animals and the environment is extremely important.

(gentle music) One thing I needed to learn was that I would have wildlife coming to eat things, I didn't necessarily want them to eat, like my tomato plants in the summer, the doe would frequently come and graze.

And so I found products that were non-harmful to the environment or any wildlife, but just had a smell to them that deer didn't like to keep sprinkled around those, but there are other subtle ways to, for instance I had to learn to keep my trash inside, otherwise the bear would be attracted to it, and the deer, and that would be harmful to them.

We don't want them to develop a dependency on humans for their food.

We chose not to put our gas grill outside because we started to worry that would attract our bear.

We have a black bear, who that is very much part of his territory, and visits us regularly.

(gentle music) Then there are things like we have mice, we live in the mountains, they come into the house.

So we do trap them, but we don't use a rodenticide or anything that would be harmful, should that mouse get back outside and some other predator find it, it's gonna kill wildlife.

So we do it naturally.

(upbeat music) I think what surprised me most is just the quantity and amount and variety of wildlife that was there, that I didn't know was already there.

We have seen almost everything I can mention, which really excited me.

And we put up a trail cam in one area of our home, and then we decided we needed more because there were so many different varieties of wildlife coming in.

The first time we put up bluebird boxes, we had a nest immediately, and the three years we'd been here, we've had three clutches successfully fledged every year.

We see everything from raptors to songbirds of all varieties.

We see lots of mammals, we have bears visiting our pond, we have lots of doe, (gentle music) we have a family of raccoons, we caught on a trail cam one time, all bringing their young to drink from the pond, groundhogs, you name it, turtles, snakes, everything that lives in this part of Virginia, we've seen.

(upbeat music) >>Regardless of where you live, there are ways that you can create a backyard habitat, whether you're on a farm in the countryside, have a big suburban residential lawn, or maybe you live in a condo, and your yard is the size of a postage stamp or an apartment with only a patio or perhaps a balcony.

You can still provide food, water, shelter and safety to some form of wild animal.

But there are many things that you can do to make your backyard safer for wildlife in general.

First and foremost, you can minimize or eliminate the use of pesticides in and around your yard.

Pesticides don't just kill the bad bugs, they are indiscriminate killers, and they can really destroy the very animals, insects, birds, mammals, or others that you're trying to attract.

Reduce your toxic footprint.

If you have feeders in your yard, as part of your backyard habitat, or especially if you're in an urban area, where feeders are really important, be sure to keep them clean.

Disease in wildlife is spread where animals come together, keeping that feeder clean and the ground underneath the feeder clean, from spoiled food is an important step in the right direction.

And the same is true with water features, keep your bird bath clean or your water fountain clean and keep the water fresh.

That is a way not only to provide the badly needed water, but also be sure that it's safe for your wild visitors.

One of the things to be sure and guard against is bird strikes in your backyard habitat.

And that means having bird safe windows.

There are specialty films that can be applied to the glass that enabled the birds to see the glass and avoid the window without interfering with your view from the inside in any way.

Some of the old fashioned simple ways of keeping birds away from the window, simply involve thumb tacking or stapling some strips of surveyors tape in front of the window, as they flutter it catches the bird's attention and keeps them from those deadly collisions.

One of the critical elements in any backyard habitat is that safety factor.

And that really comes into play when you're thinking about the types of products you wanna use around your yard or around your home.

Avoid things like landscape netting, in which wildlife can become entangled, avoid the use of pesticides or rodenticides to take care of pests, they're indiscriminate killers.

Be mindful that that deep bucket of water you have in the backyard for Fido, may also become a death trap for wildlife that may get into the bucket, if they have no way to get out.

Simply putting a little stick in the bucket, or being sure that there's a place where animals in the water can escape the water will save lives.

If you're one of those folks that doesn't have a backyard or your situation just doesn't allow you to build your own backyard habitat, consider contacting a local elementary school and suggesting to them that you and others help create a schoolyard habitat, an area where natural plants and flowers can attract things that are not only beautiful, for the students to enjoy, but they're educational as well.

You will be glad that you take the steps to help wildlife by providing the critical elements of food, water, shelter and safety, improves their world, and it improves your world.

(upbeat music) (birds chirping) (water splashing) >>Funding for "Untamed" is brought to you by.

(birds chirping) (water splashing) (upbeat music) (gentle music) (upbeat music)