Backyard Habitat Help

Backyard habitats can be great for the environment, for the entertainment and education of children and adults, for the control of unwanted insect predators like mosquitoes, and for many other less tangible reasons.

Most of the work can be done by the motivated homeowner, but sometimes a little help is needed. we have many pages of information available here to help you, and we have lists of other backyard habitat help resources as well.

Beside these information resources, we also offer practical backyard habitat help for the homeowner when it is needed. We do this by offering consultation and help with identification of species, the elimination of unwanted species by the least drastic means, and we can help with design and construction when needed.

Not everyone who wants to do something good for wildlife, the environment, nature and the neighborhood, has the skills, the tools, the license, or the time to perform some of these tasks. If you find yourself in one of these situations, we will be glad to help you develop your own backyard wildlife habitat.

Our services are provided for those in the East Texas area.

September 15, 2008 · james · No Comments
Tags: Backyard habitat help, Backyard habitat information, Education, Environment, Nature, Wildlife · Posted in: Backyard habitat, Backyard habitat help, Backyard habitat information, Education, Environment, Habitat, Habitat Management, Nature, Pests, Uncategorized, Wildlife

IKE Aftermath: Tree Damage and Mosquitoes What to Do

As I write this, IKE is bearing down on East Texas, and appears to be headed right over us following a path almost directly relative to the Sabine river. If you live in this area, the chances are high that you will have some tree damage in the aftermath.

Broken limbs are not necessarily the end of your tree, neither are splits. There are some things that can be done, such as cabling and bolting. The trick to this is to get the damage and debris cleared, and make the repairs as soon as possible after the damage happens.

I mention this, because after such an event, most folks are so anxious to get back to normal, that they may miss the opportunity to do such repairs in the rush to get everything cleared away. If there is any doubt about the viability of an important tree on your property after the storm, it would be a good idea to get the opinion of a specialist before hacking it into brush and firewood.

After such an extreme weather event chain saw hackers abound who are trying to make a few bucks providing a needed service. Just make sure that they don’t hack up something you might regret losing in the long run!

Another part of the aftermath of such a storm is mosquito infestation. A good source for information on such issues is Bugs and Weeds, a site dedicated to pest prevention. There is a lot of practical information on this site, and a new post on the Bugs and Weeds blog on this issue in particular.

September 13, 2008 · james · One Comment
Tags: Damaged trees, Mosquitoes, Trees · Posted in: Damaged trees, Mosquitoes, Storm damage, Tree damage, Tree repair, Trees

East Texas Tree Care Services

Burns Environmental East Texas Tree Care Services

Trees are one of our greatest assets in East Texas. They provide shelter for birds and other wildlife, and shade for us and our homes from the scorching Texas heat. Healthy trees also provide added dollar value to your real estate.

Tree Damage

Construction, and other activities, can cause compaction, slowing the availability of air, water and nutrients to the roots. Construction damage to the trees roots, trunk, and limbs can invite water, fungus, insects, and disease into the tree causing them to rot and die prematurely.

This process can take several years before the symptoms show up. In the mean time, valuable time for rehabilitation is lost. The sooner the problem is known and understood, the better the chances of survival for your trees!

Services

We offer tree care services in the East Texas service area to help repair the damage caused by construction and other activities.

Proper pruning to shut down the ports of entry for water, disease and insects

Repair for damaged trunks and limbs.

Nutrient injections into the root zone which provide air, water, and nutrients to get to the place where they are available for uptake by your trees roots.

Systemic insecticide treatment.

Insecticide treatments for the insects already present.

September 8, 2008 · james · One Comment
Tags: Compaction, Shade trees, Tree care, Tree services · Posted in: Compaction, Tree care, Tree services, Trees

Environmental Services |Exotic Vegetation Management

Environmental Services: Exotic Vegetation Management

It’s a fact of life.

Plants move. They migrate from one area to another using a bewildering variety of locomotion methods. Sometimes they travel by hitch hiking on people or animals, sometimes by wind or water, but travel they do.

If there is an invasive plant in your area, the chances are pretty high, that you will have it on your property eventually. If you are trying to manage a habitat, like a garden, a backyard habitat, or a lake, pond or stream, or even a deer lease, you will eventually have to deal with them. The more you learn about them, and how to deal with them, the better off you will be.

When exotic plants enter an area, they may alter the environment of the area so much that things become unbalanced. This can occur when the invader takes over an area occupied by a plant that one form of wildlife uses for food or cover. When this happens, the native plant may disappear, and the animals that use them for food may disappear as well. Other plants and animals may be in some way dependent upon the animal that disappears, and consequently remove themselves as well.

This chain reaction can work its way through a local environment pretty quickly, or it may take years. More subtle forms of the same scenario, dealing with microbial and fungal activity may be at work as well. In some cases, the damage may be almost irreversible.

How can you prevent this?

Observation can be an effective means of preventing the problem. To stop any potential problem, or to eliminate it early, you have to know that the problem exists. Some exotics can stay hidden for a while, so checking the area fairly often will give the earliest detection.

Once you find something out of the ordinary, you should properly identify it, and if it is an invasive exotic, take immediate action!

Infestations, and multiple sightings may require some drastic measures to prevent the elimination of some or all of the native species, so you should know what you grow.

We offer identification of non native species and treatments designed to eliminate them.

East Texas Environmental Services | Pests and Predators

Tyler East Texas Environmental Services: Pests and Predators

Even in the best of habitats, unwanted insects and predators can become a problem. Although a well constructed, well managed habitat, using best practices will lower the chances of unwanted infestations, they do sometimes happen. For such cases, we offer pest prevention information, and services as well as botanical pest control. When our prevention methods and botanical pest control services are used, they combine to provide the most effective, “greenest” pest control in the industry.

It is the nature of nature and wildlife, predators will occasionally want to invade your territory. For that reason we offer predator control.

For those cases when chemical pest control may be needed, we offer carefully aimed, precisely targeted, single case, chemical pest applications, with limited environmental impact from a company that knows the environment, and cares about it’s long term well being, and your health.

What Is A Backyard Habitat?

A backyard habitat is a small scale wildlife refuge. Think of it as the “Great Outdoors” in miniature! It can be something as small as a few square feet for a butterfly garden, or a bird bath and feeder, or a full scale habitat, comprising an acre or more, and attracting all sorts of native birds, reptiles, mammals, and rodents. Most habitats, even small ones attract a number of different species. Most can be modified a little, to suit your wishes.

Why Create a Backyard Habitat?

There are a lot of great reasons to create a backyard habitat. This list offers some of the more obvious ones:

If you are a nature lover, why not create some in your backyard? When we say create, we really mean cooperate. When working on such a project, we are merely filling in the blank spots, or removing things of detriment.

More people die from Malaria each year than from any other factor. Malaria is only one of the many diseases carried by mosquitoes. Birds and bats eat mosquitoes like kids eat candy. Having birds and bats, cuts down the mosquito problem, which cuts down on on pain, swelling, and disease. It also decreases the need for insecticides, which is always a good thing for the environment, for health, and for your wallet!

So, aside from the environmental good, and the aesthetic appeal, you are providing a public health service, that saves you money!

Basic Native Backyard Habitat Requirements

Backyard Habitat Project | Where do I start? Be DIRECT

Well, we are talking about backyard habitats, so, it would seem reasonable to start there! It really doesn’t have to be a backyard, it can be a front yard, or on the side of your home, or an unused lot. In other words, it can be almost any where.

The place to begin, is in determining your DIRECTion. What do I mean? Well, let’s use this little acrostic:

Our DIRECT Approach to Creating a Backyard Habitat

There are many ways you can approach your backyard habitat project, some of them can be a little confusing. We have developed the following approach. We even created an acronym to make it easy to remember. D-I-R-E-C-T:

Decide>Identify>Remove>Encourage>Construct>Transplant

Is this to be a bird sanctuary, a small animal habitat, or do you simply want to attract butterflies? To some extent, by following these guidelines, you will have some of all.

What is already good about your landscape, and what is bad? What invasive non native plants are in the way? What will you need to do to get rid of them, and what will you use to replace them? This may cause you to want to modify what you initially wanted, as the opportunities expand. Keep in mind that you are dealing with living things, and that your project may evolve just as nature evolves.

It has been our experience, that wildlife can survive in a mixed habitat of natives and non native plant life, but that any non natives tend to throw things out of balance. Some birds will eat their fill of of non native berries or seed, and not be physically benefited. They will tend to seek out better nourishment, even if it is somewhere else. Remember, that you have limited space, so everything that grows, should benefit wildlife, or the wildlife will go.

There are several ways that this can be done, including a little pruning, and some of the other cultural practices that are normally used with landscape plants.

You may need to provide extra cover, water, and food for the wildlife. It could be something as simple as a bird or bat house,a rock den area,a feeder for supplemental feedings, or a water feature complete with falls for the wildlife to drink from and wash in.

If you have done the things on the rest of the list, you may find that you need some other plants to help round out the native wildlife diet. Planting an extra seed bearing tree, or a few shrubs that might be the favorite food of one of your winged or furry friends, might be just the thing to encourage them to spend time at your place. Just make sure it is native.

Residential Habitat Services In East Texas

Plant and Insect Relationships

Vegetation Control Insect Control: Plant and Insect Relationships

There are a few things that should be self evident. Gravity, for instance, works every minute of every day, and needs no proof aside from the fact that when you drop an object that is heavier than air, it hits the ground.

In the world of biology, as in the world of physics, some things are self evident, although dealing with living things is less predictable, still, they are there, those things that happen in patterns, that are predictable, and consistent. The relationship of plant and insect life is one of these.

Insect and vegetation relationships.

Bugs seek protection, food and water. Vegetation provides the solution to those needs. The insect population in an area increases with the availability of these resources, and uncontrolled vegetation provides those resources in abundance.

The mosquito example.

The mosquito is a good example. One of the questions we hear often is: “Can you do anything to control the mosquitoes around my pond?” The answer is yes! By controlling the vegetation, particularly the filamentous algae that often exists in ponds, we can exercise a high degree of mosquito control. Mosquitoes use the water in ponds to reproduce their young, the pond supplies water for many small animals, which provide the blood the female mosquito needs for reproduction, it provides water for the eggs to hatch and grow as larvae, and the algae, and other thick weeds provide the protection from fish, and other predators which would otherwise eat the larvae and adults.

Herbicide, or Insecticide?

This relationship between uncontrolled vegetation and insects can be repeated in every case. Plants and animals are interdependent. Controlling the growth of brush and weeds, will control the insect and animal population. In most cases, where chemicals are used to control insects, the first chemical that should be used, is an herbicide.