Animal Collective: Lots of Wildlife Species Call GM Lands Home

Campaign: GM Resource Preservation
A coyote mother and her pup sip water at GM’s Desert Proving Grounds in Arizona. The vehicle testing facility includes 186 acres of land dedicated to protecting and enhancing desert habitat for wildlife. GM also helps to manage invasive Africanized bee populations through strategically placed water barrels. The barrels draw bees away from buildings and employees and double as watering crocks for animals. Photograph: Dale Balmer

The automobile industry helps animals in an unexpected way, as General Motors hosts 4,700 acres of wildlife habitats at 46 manufacturing sites across the globe.

With the help of a partnership with the Wildlife Habitat Council, GM continues to launch certified sites that promote native wildlife and educate employees and communities about the environment. The company has obtained habitat certification at half of its manufacturing facilities around the world.

Here’s some of the wildlife that call GM facilities home.

Reposted from TheGuardian.com/General-Motors-Partner-Zone with permission.

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The Warren Technical Center in Michigan is the home of GM’s engineering and design – and it’s not hard to imagine the latter gets inspired by the variety of bugs, birds and fish that live nearby. The campus measures 709 acres, 79 of which are part of the certified wildlife habitat program. Employees monitor critters found there, like this green darner dragonfly. Photograph: David Monk
Beep-beep! This lesser roadrunner is aptly photographed near a truck at GM’s Desert Proving Grounds in Arizona. Its speed offers protection from predators while it pursues small birds, lizards, snakes and other prey. The birds also forage around the side of streets and highways for roadkill to eat. Photograph: Dale Balmer
Not one, not two, not three but 14 burros line up at GM’s Desert Proving Ground in Yuma, Arizona. Burros, small donkeys often used as pack animals, were introduced to North America by Spanish colonists in the seventeenth century. About 1,600 wild burros roam around supervised herd management areas in Arizona. Photograph: Dale Balmer
A screech owl makes its nest inside a scrap Chevrolet Volt battery cover. More than 600 homes for animals around the world – including ducks, bluebirds and bats – are made by reusing such covers. Photograph: John Bradburn
An eastern bluebird waits to be fed mealworms at GM’s Customer Care and Aftersales headquarters in Grand Blanc, Michigan. These bluebirds perch on wires, posts and low branches, scanning for insects or berries, and live across eastern North America and as far south as Nicaragua. Photograph: Kelley Briggs
This bee hotel was built at GM’s Aspern Powertrain plant in Austria. They’re for solitary bees that produce only enough honey for themselves. The insects enter through various holes in the hotel, lay an egg and cover the hole so the larvae has a protected place to grow. Photograph: General Motors
GM’s Technical Center in Warren, Michigan, has been home to a peregrine falcon aerie – that’s a nest – for several years. In 2015, three juvenile peregrines named Chevy, Sonic and Dino hatched and successfully fledged. Peregrine falcons were taken off the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s endangered species list, but are still considered endangered in Michigan. Photograph: Randy Maslovich
GM’s Spring Hill Manufacturing facility in Tennessee was first certified by the Wildlife Habitat Council in 2004. The facility actively manages 799 acres that include a farm, a nature trail and more than 300 newly planted native trees. Heavily vegetated areas around a creek that borders the facility help to slow down and filter storm water before it enters the stream. Photograph: Julie Lucas
GM’s Ramos Arizpe Complex in Mexico has a three-acre artificial lagoon – important in the water-stressed northern region of the country – that provides a wetland habitat for migrating and local birds such as the black-necked stilts pictured here. The facility also built a greenhouse to grow native trees like Pinyon pines to increase vegetation density at the site. Photograph: Rocio Ramirez