Evaluating the National Wildlife Federation's Certified Wildlife Habitat™ program

Our project focused on neighborhoods within the greater Orlando, Florida metropolitan area. We visited 50 certified yards, 50 neighboring, non-certified yards, and 50 non-adjacent, non-certified yards in the same neighborhood. To evaluate the yards, we used an ecological check-list to determine the quality and quantity of wildlife habitat in each yard. Based on the results of our study, there were significant differences in both quality and quantity of habitat found in certified versus non-certified yards. The Certified Wildlife Habitat™ program is successful in that yards in the NWF program offer wildlife habitat that is not available in non-certified yards. However, our biggest recommendation for the NWF program is that it needs to have a larger, more contiguous landscape scope. Certified yards need to be adjacent, or in close enough proximity to one another that they can act as a contiguous landscape in and of themselves, but also have connection to and coordination with other larger blocks of habitat.