A Guide To Keeping Your Home’s Trees Safe From Wildlife
You know that your back garden is truly a paradise.
When you have the space, you may aim to put in some magnolia trees or even cherry trees, which, come spring, will provide your external space with natural fragrance and beauty, as well as some fruits.
However, if you live in a rural area, you may notice that your trees look a bit haggard, particularly the bark. What’s causing this? Well, it is usually a 4-legged critter. No matter where you live in the Western world, if you have trees, they’re going to do more than simply attract birds!
Luckily, there are many options to help keep the trees around your home safe from wildlife, and here, this article will explore 3 of the biggest pests to beautiful trees and how you can prevent them from causing damage.
Deer
People who have never encountered deer presume that they are passive creatures who don’t cause damage and simply prance through the woods. Any person who lives in a rural area will tell you tree damage will usually start with deer, even if you begin to shoo them away from your garden.
This can be caused by male deer rubbing their felted antlers, which is known as buck rubbing, or simply deer eating the bark on the trees when they are hungry. The damage can happen quickly with smaller trees and can even destroy a sapling in 24 hours. When it comes to protecting trees from wildlife like deer, the only option you really have is to install a hard wire mesh with 1/2 inch or smaller openings to prevent the deer from eating the trees. Or you can even opt for plastic tree wraps, which will also last a long time.
Rabbit
You may be surprised to learn that rabbits are also a hazard to your trees, so Thumper and Bambi can come as a package in the tree wrecking deal! Rabbit damage to young trees usually happens in winter, and the damage may appear higher up the tree, particularly when the trees do not have the thick, rough bark needed to protect them.
Rabbits prefer trees that have berries on them but will go for almost anything. Eating the bark all around a newly planted sapling, a rabbit can quickly strip a tree bare. So, you need to put a fence around the tree trunk to make sure that the bunnies cannot get access.
Squirrels
Squirrels live in trees, so this is a lot harder!
Squirrels will, of course, eat any nuts or fruits but can also chew through the bark and cause parts of the tree to die. This can appear as the trees have poor branching, which will prevent the leaves from being able to photosynthesize. Once this happens, you must prune the branches back to prevent the tree from dying. There is an option called metal flashing, where you place metal at least two feet wide around the trunks of the tree.
Remember, the squirrels can jump vertically, and this metal may prevent them from gaining traction and being able to access the upper branches. However, if you have multiple trees that back onto a woodland, then metal flashing is not likely to work very well, and you should probably move your trees!