Wildlife Protection

Keeping It Simple: Easy Ways to Help Wildlife Along Roads

Creating "bunny condos" where forests join fields

When a terrestrial mitigation project requires border cutting for improved wildlife habitat, it's easy and cheap to construct a brush pile "bunny condo" for small animals. Pennsylvania Department of Transportation biologists have created habitat structures like these on 50 sites in Blair, Huntingdon, and Somerset Counties. To make the tepee-like structures, the biologists combined on-site cut tree limbs, large and small, with stone and brush, stacking them together as a pyramid and topping the pyramid with brush for additional cover. Each structure was built in just one hour and cost only $20. Rabbits, shrews, lizards, skunks, weasels, black snake, wood thrush, and lots of other small mammals, reptiles, and birds have been using the new residences.

--Apr 25, 2003

Tom Yocum, (814) 696-7224 or tyocum@state.pa.us

Pennsylvania Department of Transportatio photo

'Bunny condo'

On Wetlands and Uplands - Pennsylvania