Wildlife Habitat Services

Switchback forestry offers 

  • Wildlife Habitat Planning

    • Define priority wildlife species and their needs

    • Map current habitat and plant communities on the property

    • Provide recommendations and priorities for habitat improvement

    • Provide recommendations for maintenance of each habitat

  • Create New Habitat

    • Plantings (Native trees/shrubs/grasses/forbs)

    • Edge feathering

    • Wildlife structures

    • Forest thinning

    • Early successional habitat

  • Maintenance of Habitat

    • Invasive species control

    • Controlling tree encroachment in prairies

    • Maintaining native shrub communities

    • Prescribed fire as a tool to set back the stages of succession

Native vegetation management For deer & Turkey 

Planted food plots can be expensive and require maintenance and soil amendments. They offer some benefits to deer and turkey during very specific seasons, but are very lacking at some critical times in these species’ life cycle. Re-consider the way you’re managing for deer, turkey and small game. There may be better ways to spend your precious money and time!

Management efforts to promote native vegetation can be less expensive and longer-lived than the frequent input costs that traditional food plots, feeders, and other products the hunting industry aim to sell you.

Switchback Forestry will work hard to identify the native plant communities on your property, and work with you to improve the quality of those through active management. The landscape is usually lacking quality early successional habitat, and putting a plan together to establish and maintain that throughout your property is crucial to feed and produce wildlife species.

Early successional plant communities depend on frequent and intentional disturbance to be maintained. Switchback Forestry will work with you to develop a plan to keep these high-quality habitats in top-notch condition to improve the abundance and health of your neighborhoods’ deer, turkey and small game populations.

Non-Game wildlife Management

  1. We will work with you to improve any wildlife species or group of species that you enjoy housing on your property!

  2. Different species of songbirds, bats, reptiles, amphibians, and other types of wildlife require slightly different habitat structures and compositions. Identifying the different ecosystems that are within and surrounding your property is crucial to understanding what wildlife you can expect to reside there. We will recommend practices that enhance the diversity of those ecosystems on your acreage, in order for more wildlife to call your property home.