WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
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Sycamore Land Trust‘s mission is to preserve the beauty, health, and diversity of southern Indiana’s natural landscape through strategic land conservation and environmental education. Sycamore Land Trust wants you to know more about the wildlife communities that depend on the land they protect. In 2021, they set up 15 motion-triggered wildlife cameras at locations they know are frequented by animals. So far, they’ve recorded more than 50 animal species and are keeping an inventory of what they see. This will give them a baseline to measure the success of their large-scale wetland restoration and native planting projects. It will also help guide their stewardship plans for these nature preserves to benefit threatened and endangered species.
One of the species caught on their trail cams – and this episodes’s featured animal – is the coyote. Coyotes are native to Indiana and are often called prairie wolves. Before the European settlement of Indiana, coyotes were primarily restricted to Prairie regions of the state. But today, coyotes are found throughout Indiana, including in urban areas. If you’d like to see coyotes in their natural habitat here in Indiana, just visit Sycamore Land Trust trail cams. You can also visit one of the many preserves or trails Sycamore Land Trust maintains that are free to the public.
While the impacts of climate change seem to be increasing, people are coming together in great numbers to solve the problems we face. Land conservation is a vital part of this response, because protecting nature is one of the best ways to ensure a healthy climate. Land conservation projects that are strategic about the types of habitats they protect can have tremendous impacts, such as: clean water, healthy soil for farming, increased biodiversity (which strengthens ecosystems), more habitat options for endangered and protected species, healthy native plants for pollinators (on which our crops depend), clean air from mature forests, and balanced ecosystems free from the effects of invasive species.
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Lil BUB’s Lil Show is a co-production of WFHB and Lil BUB’s Big Fund
Segment production by Christine Brackenhoff and Stacy Bridavsky
Audio support provided by Mike Bridavsky
Theme music: “A Friend” by Lil BUB
Support for featured pets can be made through Lil BUB’s Big Fund, following the link here.
