Toyota Motor Manufacturing, West Virginia Inc.

About the Program

The Toyota Motor North America – Toyota Motor Manufacturing, West Virginia Inc. (TMMWV) site encompasses nearly 40 acres in Buffalo, West Virginia, alongside the Kanawha River, approximately 30 miles northwest of Charleston. It consists of facilities for building engines and transmissions for Toyota vehicles. The site contains a variety of habitats maintained to benefit local wildlife, including 26 acres of forest habitat, almost 12 acres of wetland habitat, rocky areas and a nine-acre wildflower habitat that is actively managed to promote native pollinator species.
 

Practices and Impacts

• The TMMWV team maintains nine acres of pollinator habitat in areas that were disturbed during construction of the Toyota facility. The team planted the habitat with a native seed mix including common milkweed, dense blazing star and butterfly weed. The team also installed and maintains insect boxes within the pollinator habitat to increase the diversity and population density of native pollinating insects. Species observed include honey bees and a variety of butterflies.
• The team installed and maintains 36 bird houses and a purple martin house to provide nesting habitat and shelter to cavity-nesting songbirds. Employee volunteers engage in monitoring by entering information in Critter Cards, a community science app. Team members have observed an overall increase in the number of bird species present in the habitat, including the first documentation of an eastern bluebird hatched on-site since monitoring began in 2015.
• In their raptor nesting project, team members installed owl boxes and raptor platforms to provide nesting sites for native raptor species. The team has also created rock piles to provide habitat for small mammals and reptiles, which provide a food source for raptors. Employee volunteers and visitors monitor the structures using Critter Cards. The team has observed a variety of raptors on-site including red-tailed hawks and Cooper's hawks.
• The TMMWV team also maintains bat houses to provide shelter for local bat populations. The team regularly engages employees to perform monthly monitoring of the bat houses for evidence of use. Recently, the team added recording devices to detect bat vocalizations.