The Elements of Habitat: A Home

Habitat is composed of four very important elements: food, water, shelter and space. Basically, healthy habitat provides everything that an animal needs to survive.

Food
Wildlife food varies from animal to animal. Some animals, like vultures, help clean up the environment by eating dead things. Others, like the pelican, will live near large bodies of water where they can find fish. The American White Pelicans, like we have at Salt Plains, live in flocks. They make a big circle in the water and as they get closer together, making the circle smaller, fish are pushed to the center for a feast.

Deer usually eat forbes found close to the ground. Opportunistic eaters like the raccoon will eat almost anything they can find in the wild - including discarded human food. Dragonflies feed on mosquitoes when they're adults, but small fish when they're young.

Animals eating a variety of food means that there is more food to go around. All the animals aren't competing for the very same patch of seed.

Water
This is a pretty easy element of habitat to describe. Wildlife need water the same way that we do. This is why wetlands are such important habitats. They provide a lot of food sources, such as fish, plants, aquatic bugs and other animals, but they also provide the very important source of water.

Shelter
Shelter can describe many things. From underground fox dens to hollow logs, woodpecker holes and deer simply bedding down into the tall brush.

Shelter provides a place for an animal to make a nest, but also a place to hide from predators or get out of bad weather. Wildlife like shelter to be close to food and water so that they have a safe place to be. Many animals will spend warm summer daytime hours sheltered in the shade, choosing to come out into open areas where we might see them at dawn and dusk.

Space
Space is often left out of habitat definitions, because it isn't as easy to define as food, water and shelter. Space is a very important element of habitat and the amount of space needed varies among wildlife species.

The bald eagle is a good example of a species that needs a lot of space. A bald eagle has very specific habitat requirements. They prefer clean water, with an abundant amount of fish, need trees, up to 100 ft tall, for perching and nesting and plenty of space in which to fly. A bald eagle may fly up to 200 miles in a single day!

Whooping cranes, an endangered species, require almost twice as much water around them before they will rest for the night.

As you spend more time around wildlife, you will notice a difference in space requirements. Along the nature trails, you will notice that herons and ibis will fly off before you get within 100 ft, but geese will often allow you to walk right by the marsh without flying away.

If you got off of the trail and moved closer, they might fly, but they are comfortable with the distance from the trail to the water. Being quiet and moving slow will improve your chances of seeing wildlife before you scare them off.

Another space need is space for migration. Wildlife migrate south, to warmth and food, when it gets cold in the north. And then, they fly back north, in the spring.

The biggest problem for wildlife came when the land became obstructed with housing developments and buildings, wetlands were drained or filled and habitat was converted to farmland - making available habitats and home ranges so small that some animals populations began to decrease because they simply didn't have enough habitat.

"Wild creatures, like men, must have a place to live. As civilization creates cities, builds highways, and drains marshes, it takes away, little by little, the land that is suitable for wildlife. And as their space for living dwindles, the wildlife populations themselves decline. Refuges resist this trend by saving some areas from encroachment, and by preserving them, or restoring where necessary, the conditions that wild things need in order to live".
- Rachel Carson