Site
Land, habitat, hydrology, movement, vegetation, access, edges.
// Framework
The Wildlifeel Framework
Most homes harm wildlife before the first wall goes up.
The damage usually starts in the drawings - the site plan, the layout, the materials list - long before a permit is pulled.
Standard green building rarely catches it, because it’s built to measure energy and emissions, not the animals living just past the property line and well beyond it.
The Framework begins by noticing what the drawing leaves out.
Wildlifeel doesn’t tell people what to build. It teaches them what they’re building into.
How I trace it
Four points of risk. Four phases of care.
Every project gets looked at across four points of risk - Site, Structure, Systems, Surfaces - and four phases of care - Alignment, Awareness, Application, Advocacy.
Together, they make sure nothing slips through: not the driveway that fractures a corridor, not the countertop quarried out of critical habitat, not the porch light that quietly rewrites a moth’s night.
The four points of risk
Structure
Building form, openings, envelope, materials, collision/refuge implications.
Systems
Lighting, water, heating/cooling, drainage, energy, noise, technology.
Surfaces
Roofs, paving, glass, fences, finishes, chemicals, outdoor surfaces.
The four phases of care
Alignment
Establish place, goals, constraints, and ecological context.
Awareness
Identify wildlife, mechanisms, and points of risk.
Application
Translate findings into design choices and priorities.
Advocacy
Communicate, document, maintain, and improve.
Inside the evaluation
What “evaluating” actually means here
Every choice gets walked through the same sequence, whether it’s a tile, a light fixture, a chair or a layout:
-
1
Where we’re starting from - what’s already true about the site or the space, before anything changes.
-
2
Who’s affected - the specific species or population in the path of the choice, not “wildlife” in the abstract.
-
3
How the harm travels - the actual mechanism connecting a decision to a consequence.
-
4
How big, how likely, how sensitive - the size of the impact, the odds of it happening, and whether the timing — breeding season, migration, nesting — raises the stakes.
-
5
Whether it can be undone - some harm is temporary; some isn’t.
-
6
What the alternatives are - and whether they meet the same human need.
-
7
What we recommend, and how urgent
One ripple, traced all the way through
Follow one choice until the whole relationship comes into view.
A driveway isn’t asphalt.
It is a heat island a nocturnal animal now has to cross.
A countertop isn’t stone.
It is a quarry, a shipping route, an ocean a whale is trying to hear across.
A window isn’t glass.
It is a reflection a migrating bird cannot tell from open sky.
A closer look
A porch light isn’t just a fixture.
Two choices. Two very different outcomes.
Standard porch light
A hawk moth doesn't reach the flower it was hunting for.
Shielded, warm-toned fixture
A hawk moth reaches the flower it was hunting for.
Follow it far enough, and every material choice turns out to be a relationship.
Every choice sends a ripple.
Let’s make it one worth leaving behind.