Coexist with Wildlife this Halloween!

 Most folks don’t consider wildlife when altering outdoor spaces which makes October a horror show when it comes to dangerous decorations.

Great care was taken to create this fantastically ghoulish yard display for Halloween for folks passing by. Yet there was no thought about how wildlife might interact with it. This yard happens to be is across the street from a 33-acre nature preserve and next to a power line right-of-way. Wildlife may have trouble with the fake spider webbing, dangling fabric and string, loud motion activated decorations, and random blinking lights.

A low hanging Halloween hazard for wildlife is fake spider webbing. This time of year, the rehab organizations that deal with creatures affected by this nasty webbing beg people not to buy it or to take it down if they’ve already put it up.

PAWS wildlife center posted this image of a song sparrow who came through their doors after becoming entangled in fake spider webbing with a plea to not use this pernicious material outside!

October is when shrubs, trees, and fences where birds might need cover are draped with webbing. This might include birds still molting who are vulnerable and need shelter from predators. Fall is peak migration and the webbing can entangle and kill birds making a pit stop on a long journey. The last of the hummingbirds migrate by the second week in October so webbing put up earlier in the month might ensnare these tiny wonders.

Fake spider webbing wrapped around trees, shrubs, fences, and dangling in the air can entrap birds. Some of these images were taken in yards that back up to a local nature preserve!

In warmer climates like the South October is when insects are still out there pollinating and living their lives until the bitter end of the growing season. This includes native bees and butterflies who have no chance of survival if they fly into this material. In addition, small critters like anoles and snakes may also fall victim to the webbing.

This non-venomous black racer snake was entangled in fake spider webbing and rescued by the homeowner who put up the webbing. The Pelican Harbor Seabird Station wildlife rescue organization saved him. This story was in the local news in Miamai, so hopefully folks who watched the story took down their webbing.

Folks who use fake webbing argue that raising awareness about the potentially harmful impact is being a buzzkill and the documented cases of harm to wildlife are relatively rare. They may even insist the harm caused is an urban myth because they’ve never seen any critters harmed by their decorations. Like the folks who think loud fireworks are also great fun despite the senseless disruption to the natural world, the fake spider web defenders may say “what’s the real harm?”.

I sincerely wonder how many people who cover their yards in fake spider webbing have heard the warnings about it but don't believe it's a real issue. In the bottom webbing you can see all the leaves stuck in the webbing meaning insects and birds might be in the tree above it.

The cynics might be right in the sense that the chance may be small (or more likely undocumented) of ensnaring a living creature. Another way to look at this though is any harm caused by fake webbing is 100% preventable. If the narrative if flipped, the question becomes whether the fun worth the risk of taking a chance on a slow, inhumane, and unnecessary death of a fellow being we are stewards of protecting in our outside spaces. Is modeling indifference to wildlife or arrogance about our dominance the message we want to give to children about our relationship with the natural world?

Wildlife DOES get entrapped in fake spider webbing! Fake spider webbing collage📷 Native Bee - Animal Welfare League of Arlington; Song Sparrow - Progressive Animal Rescue Society; Deer - Naturecalgary on IG; Moth - r/moths on Reddit; White Plumed Honeyeater - Ryan Christopherson; Bat - Dick Wilkins; Robin, Ruby-crowned Kinglet - Willowbrook Wildlife Center; Owl, Hummingbirds - Wildcare wildlife rescue group; Rabbit - Mississauga Animal Services.

The environmental impact of the webbing is often an additional concern. Some is made from dense cotton but most is made from strong, unforgiving synthetic plastic fibers which are not biodegradable and ultimately contribute to the growing microplastic problem as it gets smaller and smaller but still persists to pollute soil and water. The plastic webbing goes by a range of names that might include polypropylene polyester, resin, PET, or even artificial cotton (which is a bizarre descriptive!). Both the cotton and plastic will entangle wildlife.

Most of the time the fake spider webbing packaging doesn't even indicate what the webbing is made of! By mid-October this plastic garbage is being discounted along with all the other cheap disposable decorations that will be driven to a landfill the week after Halloween.

 A recent study found that 30% of bird nests were made with human trash. This means all those bits and pieces of webbing that are impossible to remove might continue to harm wildlife long after Halloween.

A few years ago I took this image of a nest of some sort made of fake spider webbing. There was a scary amount of webbing so maybe someone just left it up and didn't bother to take it down before a bird or squirrel made a nest with it.

As if harming wildlife wasn’t enough, the thin, tiny strands of fake webbing are highly flammable. In much of the country this could be a dangerous problem. Even in Georgia October is historically the driest month of the year and in some years, like this one, it’s even drier - so the risk of fire in a toasty landscape is real.

My yard usually gets some moisture during October, but this month has been so dry it's a bit more crinkly than usual!

I’ve seen suggestions to use fake spider webbing inside which in addition to possibly creating single use plastic waste supports demand for this kind of dangerous product outside. Just don’t buy it!

Other problematic Halloween decorations include hanging string lights that contribute to the growing light pollution problem. This is also called Artificial Light at Night or Alan. Seasonal light might be in colors like orange or purple or in shapes like pumpkins or ghosts. (Safe wildlife friendly decorations with a decorative lighting features can be set on a timer to not disorient migrating birds.) The lights can also disorient migrating birds and cause collisions, attract insects to their death, or entangle wildlife if wrapped around shrubs or tree trunks. Decorations made with mesh, netting, gauze, string, or wire may pose similar entrapment dangers. 

This yard is a minefield for wildlife with hanging gauze ghouls and fake spider webbing they can get entangled in.

Loud, random noises from animatronics or motion activated decorations blasting noise pollution have the potential to disrupt wildlife, causing stress and interrupting their ability to forage and communicate.

We forget wildlife doesn't always have the ability to adapt to strange new decorations that make noise and light up.

Chemicals added to the outside space can cause environmental problems and have the capacity to harm wildlife – such as fake smoke and fogging solutions, shaving cream, silly string, or glitter that that might be toxic or disorienting to wildlife

We often don't stop to think about what happens to the various materials we might use during outside celebrations such as silly string and glitter which are both petroleum-based plastics and will stay around with the potential to harm wildlife in the short run and contribute to the growing microplastic problem for longer than we'll be alive! *There are now biodegradable silly string options available.

Ecofriendly Halloween Options

Being more ecologically friendly when decorating outside is a great opportunity to model ways to celebrate the holiday yet still protect and coexist with nature. Choose functional decorations that can be repurposed, reused or even recycled once the holiday is over. Online groups like the Buy Nothing exist for like-minded people who want to slow down the journey to landfills for items.

Buy Nothing groups are helping folks pass around things like plastic decorations - like this scary pumpkin that was offered up in my neighborhood Buy Nothing group.

 Any decorated windows will do double duty preventing bird window strikes. This might include DIY crafts or already purchased decals, banners, or other decorations.

Kudos to these homeowners who it appears reuse this window banner every year. As a bonus, it will stop window strikes on these windows.

After washing off the Halloween designs made with glass markers (aka liquid chalk markers), bird window strikes can be prevented throughout the year by making dots with a white glass marker 2-4 inches apart on all the outside windows of the house.

The same markers I make these white dots on all my windows with could be used to draw Halloween designs. Once the holiday is over - the design can be washed off and inconspicuous dots can replace them on windows to stop bird strikes.

Pumpkins are grown to be used as a decoration for a few weeks then thrown away in the trash to be brought to landfills where they contribute to greenhouse pollution from methane. Everyone knows that CO2 is bad, but methane is a greenhouse gas that is 28 times more potent than CO2 as a heat trapping gas in our atmosphere!

Pumpkin consumerism is real. There are services that will dump an obscene amount of pumpkins and other gourds on your doorstep. The cost of one local service has packages starting at $350 and going up to $750!

If you buy the larger pumpkins to carve, they can be composted after Halloween or given to farms, zoos, or maybe even neighbors with chickens. If the pumpkins won’t be carved, a more functional decoration is to buy the small one to three pound pumpkins often labeled as sugar or pie pumpkins  which are the only pumpkins worth using in cooking because they’re less watery. Every year I buy a handful of them to line my steps.

• In November I cut the pie pumpkins in half

• I scoop out the seeds and set them aside to roast

• I poke a few holes in the skin of the pumpkin halves with a knife and roast them flesh side down on parchment-lined baking sheets oven until they’re soft and collapsed (about an hour).

• Once cool, I scoop out the flesh and puree until smooth in a food processor

• I freeze the puree in 1 cup portions to use in all my pumpkin recipes including our Thanksgiving pumpkin pie.

Our fall tradition is to put sugar or pie pumpkins on our front steps. In November we roast them, puree them, and freeze the puree to make the most amazing pumpkin pies and other treats throughout the winter.

West Wildlife Rescue had a clever Snack-o-lantern contest asking their followers to send in their photos of pumpkins "decorated" by wildlife after they smeared peanut butter strategically to make faces. The only caution was to make sure not to use peanut butter with xylitol which is toxic to wildlife.

Making a snack-o-lantern for wildlife seems like a fantastic alternative to buying, carving, and throwing out pumpkins. This amazing collage showing how it works by Kelli Guthrie was on West Wildlife Rescue's Facebook page.

Making DIY bird treats such as seasonally shaped suet cakes or birdseed decorations with scary cookie cutters keep the Halloween decorations focused on wildlife. Audubon Magazine, the American Bird Conservancy, and just about every nature oriented organizations shares tips for ways to have a bird friendly Halloween.

Making bird friendly suet cakes in seasonal shapes is a fun way to celebrate the holiday and keep wildlife in the picture.

If you coexist with wildlife (e.g. all living things in your outside spaces) all year long you’ll have natural spiders and their webs decorating your yard and around the outside of your home when Halloween rolls around - that is if you live in the South or other warm climates when Orb weaver webs are most obvious in the fall when the spiders are mature. Some orb weavers like garden spiders make large stunning webs with a zipper in them.

The zipper spider web is the real Halloween deal!

In addition to working towards a plastic free Halloween, it’s also sustainable to reuse or repurpose decorations you’ve already accumulated, even the plastic ones. The pressing danger of microplastics are a relatively new challenge most of us are still trying to come to terms with since plastic has been such a large part of our world for so long. I had a huge basket with a variety of different plastic skeleton creatures accumulated from the prime yard decorating years with my now grown kids. Instead of throwing the skeletons in the trash to be trucked to a landfill, I gave most of them away and continue to reuse the rest every year in my Scary Truths yard display. Some of them are a bit broken which only adds to the vibe!

With a brief search, there are plenty of articles with ideas for eco-friendly DIY yard decorations and endless suggestions for simple ways to not harm wildlife and help repair our world when decorating for Halloween.

Making a bird feeder with a pumpkin instead of making a jack-o-lantern is a great family activity and way to share the holiday with wildlife. This image is from the Growit Buildit blog.

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