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YardWorks Contest: Neighbors Join Forces
to Create Bird-Friendly Yards
New York State residents can win free landscape design advice
For release: April 30, 2013
Ithaca, N.Y.--An area the size of West Virginia is converted to residential use each decade, leaving less habitat to support wildlife. But many people use their yards to help birds and other wildlife by setting up feeders, building nest boxes, or putting in special plants. With that in mind, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's YardMap project (YardMap.org), in partnership with the Cornell University Department of Landscape Architecture, is hosting a unique contest. Groups of neighbors across New York State are invited to work together to build larger networks of bird-friendly habitat.
YardMap is a free, year-round citizen-science project focused on building bird habitat. Individuals sign up for YardMap and create a basic map of their yard using easy "point and click" online tools. The goal of the contest is to gather other neighbors to join YardMap and map their properties, then enter the contest as a neighborhood group.
Contest winners will receive free landscape design advice from the Cornell Department of Landscape Architecture. A student-professor team from the Cornell YardWorks Studio led by Cornell Landscape Architecture Assistant Professor Josh Cerra will work with the winning neighborhood groups to develop a habitat enhancement plan that coordinates the efforts of all participating landowners. Winners will receive schematic designs that lay out concepts for habitat enhancement in each individual yard and include planting advice, plant lists, and illustrative landscape designs.
Winners will be selected based on the number of maps that neighborhoods can generate, and their proximity to one another. Participants don't have to be bird experts. For additional contest information, visit yardworks.yardmap.org. The deadline for entries is June 25, 2013.
"Birds don’t use one yard exclusively," said YardMap project leader Rhiannon Crain, "so we need to make these habitat connections for them out of the fragmented landscape."
"One important step we can take is to think a little bigger than our own backyard by working with neighbors across property boundaries to create larger areas of habitat," says Cerra. "This is not a common practice, and that is where expert help, like the design and planning exercises we are offering as a prize for this contest, can come in handy."
See examples of YardMaps and other wildlife-friendly neighborhood landscape designs.
Contact:
Pat Leonard, (607) 254-2137, pel27@cornell.edu
Images for media use available at http://content.yardmap.org/yardworks-press/
Image by Jesse H. Nicholson, Cornell Landscape Architecture MLA '13
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