Backyard Habitat Certification Program

Technician working in a garden.
Participants holding Certified Backyard Habitat sign.
Participants holding Certified Backyard Habitat sign.

Welcome!

Plant roots, create a habitat, transform the world—one yard at a time.

Columbia Land Trust and Bird Alliance of Oregon offer this unique program to support the creation and expansion of urban natural habitats. These habitats contribute to the broader conservation efforts of our parent organizations by strengthening and expanding wildlife corridors, creating connectivity between public and private lands.

Learn more about us, our collaborations, and our funding partners.

Columbia Land Trust logo
Bird alliance of oregon logo.

Get Inspired

You can make an impact, too!

As a program that stewards land and encourages the planting of native plants to restore the land and the wildlife that depend upon it, it is important for us first to acknowledge the history of this land that we now tend and the history of the Indigenous peoples that have stewarded this land before us and in many places, continue to steward this land today.

Whether you are an individual with a yard or represent a community site, you can join in our collective effort to transform urban natural spaces into thriving habitats and make our cities healthier and more climate resilient for ourselves and for wildlife. Our community of urban habitats is over 12,000+ strong and growing every day. If you’re inspired by numbers, check out our Mapping Our Impact data!

Learn how you can join our community on our Grow a Habitat page.

223,425

Native Plants Planted

12,000+

Sites Enrolled

Everything you need–at your fingertips!

With hundreds of resources to grow your habitat, our resource library is an essential part of your action plan. Whether you’re in our program, or outside our service area, we have resources for you.

If you’d like professional assistance with your habitat, we have a local professionals directory, too!

Resources shown in device screens with icons for topic categories.