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Wildlife Protection

Keeping It Simple: Easy Ways to Help Wildlife Along Roads

Rough pond-bottoms and inverted root wads increase wildlife diversity on wetlands

Typically when water quality treatment ponds are constructed, an effort is made to smooth the bottom and sides to get rid of ruts, bulldozer tracks, and bucket scars. However, the Minnesota Department of Transportation leaves the ponds they build in a rough condition to increase the ponds' bottom-surface area and to encourage the growth of a wide variety of wetland plants and resulting wildlife diversity. Minnesota Department of Transportation biologists used this technique on Highway 10 and County Road H wetlands sites in Mounds View, Minnesota. They also put inverted tree-root wads on the sites for songbirds to use as perches and geese to use as nesting habitat. Trees cut off 5-6 feet above ground were the starting point. The biologists pushed the remaining stumps from the soil, placing them upside down in the wetland.
 
--Apr 25, 2003

Photo by Dwayne Stenlund, Minnesota Department of Transportation

Inverted root wads increase habitat diversity at wetland sites in Mounds View, Minnesota