Yep! Maybe not as drastically as you might be envisioning though. I have 2.5 acres of swamp in Florida. I move slow and observe the effects I’m creating because it’s surprising what one man’s effort over only 4-years has changed.

If you’re sitting at my main camp (maybe 2500sq./ft?) it’s plenty hot. If you walk 75’ down the trail, the temperature drops noticeably since it’s heavily shaded and you’re approaching a pond. Our forestry professor showed us an experiment he had laid in the forest the week before we camped there. He had 2 min/max thermometers, one under the pines and one in a glade, only 60’ apart. Temperatures in the wooded area stayed stable where the glade demonstrated sharp high and low ranges.

There’s a 2’ wide stream I can easily dam off. With a dozen cinder blocks or bags of concrete I could radically alter the wetlands. There are a couple of spots choked by dead falls I aim to clear and that will make a huge difference in water flow. This effects the bug populations. Far more mosquitoes and chiggers near the water, and far more dragonflies eating them. Hot and dry areas attract fire ants and drive off the tiny spiders that hunt the leaf litter.

Clearing trails has been a boon for the banana spiders. They like to be in the open, but not too open. My girls are out there getting fat on bugs everyday. At this time of year they’re being replaced by some other big spider that likes the same environment and spacing.

Had a young ecologist drop by to look at buying the surrounding land, really popped my eyes open to much I had missed. The low, wet areas and the slightly higher areas are very different, especially the trees. You can walk 200-300’ and see a changed forest. So moving the water around, which isn’t hard, and given time, you’ll have a largely different environment.

As to animals, I’m working on that in the future. Most of them are down by the river, don’t catch much on the trail cams. Saw some rabbits yesterday, and you might be surprised, but that was a bit alarming. Pretty wild out there so animals stay the hell away from humans and noise, not used to it. I’d probably shot 100 rounds of .22 and there were still right there! I’m worried the human population is encroaching.

Some ways I’m working to change the environment.

• Put some native mosquito eating fish in the ponds. Not sure how they fared, but there seems to be more activity. Threw a few dozen crawdads in there, no idea if they’re thriving or even alive.
• Stole some pitcher plants and sundews from the swamp by my house, trying to get them going. (Illegal, I know, but it’s not like I’m selling them.) Have to clear some more light around the ponds to really kick them off.
• Working on getting more flowers to attract hummingbirds and pollinators. Along with trying to stay mainly native, the lack of light really hamstrings my efforts. Which reminds me, I need to try some bee hotels out there, worked great at home. I did see honeysuckle for the first time yesterday!
• Generally slashing the crap I don’t want, choking vines for example, to encourage the plants and wildlife I do want.

tl;dr You can easily and drastically alter the local environment, but heat is about all you can change for the local climate.