User:Jengod/Cemeteries as wildlife habitat



Cemeteries (also called burial ground, graveyards, churchyards, memorial parks, et al.) are often valuable wildlife habitats with unique ecological roles. Rural cemeteries may preserve plant communities that were plowed out existence elsewhere, or have sentinel trees that serve as roosts for birds. Urban cemeteries may serve as nesting grounds and wildlife corridors, host lichen and plant specimens that struggle elsewhere, and serve sanctuaries for migrating birds traveling over cities to their nesting grounds. The ecology of cemeteries is a form of insular ecology wherein "limited areas of suitable wildlife habitat surrounded by larger areas of unsuitable habitat." Religion may be an important variable for biodiversity in cemeteries, depending on the prescribed graveyard maintenance practices of a given faith.

The two most important factors for cemetery biodiversity are the size (larger is better) and age (older is better) of the burial ground.

We reviewed the results of 97 relevant studies of the topic from five continents

Science etc
Pearson, birds of a New York graveyard et al

The ecology of cemeteries has attracted interest since at least the early 20th century.

Koehler, A., and G. Koehler. 1945. A bird study in the Madison Cemetery. Passenger Pigeon

7:15-19.

EMLEN, J. T. 1974. An urban bird community in Tucson, Arizona: derivation, structure, regula- tion. Condor 76: 184-197.

THOMAS, J. W., and R.A. Dixon. 1973. Cemetery ecology. Nat. Hist. 82( 3) :61-67.

PEARSON, T. G. 1915. Cemeteries as bird sanctuaries. Audubon Sot. Circular No. 2.

One ornithologist studying Chicago cemetery birds in the 1970s found that cavity-nesting birds common to cemeteries were spilling over into adjacent neighborhoods, meaning that the cemeteries were acting as a "base camp" for habitat expansion.

"Many of the bird species found nesting in cemeteries in the present study are typical of the forest islands in the deciduous forest-prairie transi- tion zone. For these species, cemeteries may be less islands than enclaves from which in- vasion of additional kinds of urban habitat."

"Other areas, such as cemeteries, provide habitat to wildlife in the urban environment. Ninety-five species of birds have been observed in cemeteries of the Boston metropolitan area (Thomas and Dixon 1974). Starlings, robins, and blue jays are abundant, as are common flickers, song sparrows, catbirds, ring-necked pheasants, and mock¬ ingbirds. Twenty species of mammals have been recorded using the cemeteries, including raccoon, striped skunk, red fox, woodchuck, red squirrel, flying squirrel, opossum, muskrat, and cottontail."

"In the urban complex particularly, where natural habitats are fragmented and isolated, scattered habitat reserves and interconnecting corridors are especially valuable. Broadly viewed, wildlife reserves consist of variously designated areas such as wildlife refuges, sanctu¬ aries, and preserves, as well as undesignated areas of differing sizes that meet the basic needs of wildlife. The latter category includes parks, cemeteries, and community open spaces. In this discussion, corridors are linear strips of habitat that serve as travel lanes for seasonal movements of wildlife and as interconnecting links between or among habitat reserves. These may be natural, such as ridgetops and riparian strips along rivers, or constructed, such as fencerows and hedgerows."

"Habitat edge was defined earlier as the interface between two or more structural types of vegetation. Urban areas have a lot of edge habitat. Edges demark private property boundaries, occur along streams, power lines, and transportation corridors, and are found in cemeteries, on golf courses, and in community and neighborhood parks where they separate active-use areas from passive-use areas."

Urban v Rural cemeteries For example there are some 20,000 churchyards in England and Wales, which vary wildly in size but at an estimated average of an acre each, that's 20000 acre of habitat, roughly equivalent in size to Peak District National Park. The habitat range in the UK alone includes "seashore and rocky coast to chalk grassland, heath and deep woodland."

"In some counties, the churchyard is the last refuge for wildlife in a parish."

"many of the walls and hedges surrounding churchyards are of great age"

"old stone churchyard walls are especially important for wildlife in areas where there is little or no local stone. In Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, most of the county records for certain ferns refer to specimens growing on church and churchyard walls."

LICHENS: "Church memorial stone is, above all, a habitat for...lichens. Some country churchyards support over a hundred different species, which glow orange, buttercup yellow, blue-green and grey against the stone."

Sacred yew trees

Common flora of British churchyards includes meadow saxifrage, cowslips, slender speedwell, lesser celandines, green alkanet, herb Robert

"Conservation is second nature in churchyards, and in many places it already extends as much to the wildlife as to the ancient fabric of the church and the historical artefacts."

Photo Little Tew, Oxfordshire Diversity cemeteries Hungary

hungary protected flora

Diversity cemeteries Romania

“Graveyards, like military bases, are often excellent places to look for rare species and ecosystems. Recently, a twenty-five-acre remnant of tall-grass prairie was discovered in a cemetery in urban St. Louis.”

citizen science Belgian bees

Ecologists have found that urban green spaces including cemeteries are "collectively important, habitats for maintaining and conserving biodiversity in cities."

Replicate biodiversity studies

a significant fraction of the diversity of plants and small animals of the earth resides in human-influenced landscapes...cemeteries contribute to this storehouse and therefore deserve increased attention, understanding and preservation."

Large cemeteries over 100 years old especially manifest "great potential for increased biotic diversity and expanded ecosystem services."

Victor Shelford 1930s tall-grass prairie

Mount Hope Cemetery, Lansing Michigan high ground "high-quality remnants of native habitat" snakes and owls

Academic study of cemeteries as sites of ecological significance has increased due to "mounting concern about climate change, urban sprawl, habitat destruction and species extinction." In 2014, team of university biologists and geographers found that "Small, undisturbed family cemeteries on the Lower Eastern Shore of Maryland" provided crucial data about soil erosion rates as "continued cultivation around the cemeteries has left many of them as isolated remnant knolls, elevated above the surrounding fields."

Scalloped spirea thought extinct in Hungary but was found in 12 burial grounds

salep Turkish graveyard orchids

Natural England 19 cemeteries "local nature reserves" In the U.S. state of Illinois, "17 cemeteries have been protected as state nature preserves; all contain native prairie plants from pre-settlement days, such as big and little bluestem grass and Indian grass."

John Carolin guards the white oak and the other way around.



In the United States, Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Program TK Tk

NWF + Memphis hardwood

Ebbe Nielsen biodiversity

1195 nests 34 species four months 1970s

Use it intentionally instead of happenstance

Earth day at Arlington

hedges planted around cemeteries

Arnos Vale Cemetery in Bristol

woodland habitat File:Arnos Vale Cemetery, Bristol.jpg

Pine trees in Kansas for birders

Evergreen Cemetery Florida "magnet for migrating birds"

Utah Christmas bird count Blue grouse, owls

Montana bird count

100 species Evergreen Cemetery Forest in Charlotte, North Carolina

Cave Hill Cemetery champion trees in Kentucky

Beetles

Bug habitat walls Czech!

SCANDINAVIA graveyard as greenspace

CANADA graveyard as greenspace

Garden cemetery movement (Non-aligned?)

Magnificient Seven

Abney Park

West Hawaii State Veterans Cemetery replanting project

Rambunctious garden graveyard??

Chinese family graveyards Native trees Pakistan cemeteries

Angola cultural practices influence

Ted Lousley The Natural History of the City

John Talbot White - Guardian columns? churchyards

George Barker "wildlife conservation in the care of churches and courtyards" 1972

Wilder churches

De eeuwige tuin : beplanting op graven en begraafplaatsen by Dijk, Hanneke van, Vertaalster, 1943 [The eternal garden: planting on graves and cemeteries]

Habitat enrichment
Like other cemeteries around the world, the famous Père Lachaise in Paris has become a miniature biodiversity preserve. A change in management practices, including a prohibition on the use of pesticides and a sterilization program that reduced the cemetery's population of feral cats, set the stage for what is now described as a "rich ecosystem." Flora now growing at the cemetery includes cyclamen and orchids; wildlife present at the cemetery includes foxes and over 100 species of birds including flycatchers and tawny owls.

Mt Auburn Bird Committee

US Dept of Ag circular 1920 bc birds eat pest bugs

u no texas

Cemetery prairie
Old cemeteries harbor remnants of once vast prairie

northern Missouri, bluestem, Indian grass, compass plant and wild indigo

Less than 40 acres

Few cemeteries encouraged existing cemetery associations to use traditional methods including burns

Two in O County, Iowa a

Illinois - poor township - remote - Tomlinson, Indian grass, leadplant, prairie rose, Canadian wild rye

white prairie clover, purple prairie clover, prairie phlox, leadplant, wild rose and grassy death camass

Patridges and badgers

Never plowed!

Weston Cemetery Prairie Illinois

Linden Township Cemetery Prairie in Iowa

200 to 300 relic prairies in Iowa

Audubon magazine, July 1972, John Madson

Pilot Grove NHRP prairie

Brownlee Prairie Cemetery Nature Preserve Illinois? Maybe

1000 acres left in Iowa estimated

Rochester Cemetery in Cedar County Iowa Rochester Cemetery plant list Associated Press Hallowed Prairie Iowa DNR magazine

50 to 60 native plants - sand prairie - birdsfoot violet and daisy fleabane, prairie phlox, golden alexander

Munson Township Cemetery in Cambridge Illinois 25 years

Smith Cemetery Nature Preserve Ohio

Migratory bird hostels
It is nearly always easy to locate a churchyard without difficulty; the familiar tower or spire signals to us now just as it has to people since medieval times.

"Mature trees of churchyard and hedge provide effective shelter for birds, mammals and insects."

Etiquette
birding w dead rules