What They Can Do
Now that you've created an environment that welcomes wildlife, how do you cope with it? Don't get me wrong, I love sharing my space with wildlife, but doing so does mean spending a fair amount of time and effort protecting the plants I want to grow. Humans have a seemingly inborn need to control their lives and environment. Wildlife view the world quite differently. When it comes to edibles, they have no concept of "this is for us - that is for them". If they can eat it, they will try to do so. For them, it's a matter of life or death.
This can prove frustrating to the gardener, who, wanting to attract songbirds, puts up a nifty feeder and then watches as the squirrels make away with the lion's share. Or, wanting the sound of moving water and the joy of growing waterplants and watching the fish and the critters who live in water, one expends much sweat and some money creating a pond. Of course, the local raccoons and herons think you've put this in just for them and proceed to enjoy the bounty.
Some people are allergic to bee stings and flinch at the sight of anything with wings and a yellow and black color scheme. Some are horrified by spiders. Others abhor anything with more than four legs. Allergies aside (and allergies to bee stings are a serious matter), the creepy-crawly and flying critters are a very necessary part of the ecosystem and should, unless caught in the act of severe damage to your plants, be left alone to get on with their lives.
Property damaging critters, however, like carpenter ants and carpenter bees, do require some effort be expended to stop them from turning your house into cheesecloth. There is one other exception to this laissez faire attitude, and that's slugs. Slugs and snails do perform useful functions in nature; getting rid of rotting organic material and providing food for other critters. However, they also do heavy damage to the tender growth of many plants, and for that, they earn the death sentence in my garden.
In parts of the planet, gardeners have to contend with wild boar, baboons, kangaroos, prairie dogs, armadillos, moose and bear. In my part of the planet, probably the worst pest is the whitetail deer (referred to as Bambi by many, including me, in reference to an animated cartoon movie produced many years ago by the Disney Co.) As many of you are probably aware, their populations have been increasing, particularly in suburban areas, where there are no predators and hunting is not allowed. Deer will eat just about anything that grows; different herds in different places and the same herds at different times, will try any plant if they're hungry enough. Even if they don't like it, they can do a good deal of damage tasting it to find out.
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