Defenders of Wildlife Blog

Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge, Nevada (Credit: Jerry Pierce)

Mary Beth Beetham, Director of Legislative Affairs

Cabeza Prieta. Laguna Atacosa. Kenai. Montezuma. Pelican Island. What do these names have in common? Each is a national wildlife refuge — special places where wildlife comes first, strung like a lattice of fine jewels across America, places as beautiful as the names that describe them. If important conservation programs go off the fiscal cliff or are subject to further budget cuts, they could be downsized or eliminated completely, to the detriment of hundreds of species of wildlife. Last week, we talked about one of these: the Endangered Species Program. This week, we’re taking a look at the National Wildlife Refuge System, part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS).

Birdwatchers at Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge

With 560 refuges on approximately 150 million acres, the National Wildlife Refuge System is the largest network of lands and waters in the world dedicated to wildlife conservation. Refuges are home to more than 700 bird species, 220 kinds of mammals, 250 reptiles and amphibians, 1,000 species of fish and nearly 300 threatened or endangered species. The Refuge System forms the backbone of our nation’s efforts to protect our unique and irreplaceable wildlife heritage. And while wildlife comes first on refuges, they are for people, too. There is a refuge in every state and territory, and within an hour’s drive of most major American cities, and the millions of Americans who visit them each year not only enjoy their experiences at the refuge, but also contribute to the local economies of nearby communities.

How does the FWS manage this valuable national asset? The Refuge System’s work is divided into five areas: Wildlife and Habitat Management; Refuge Visitor Services; Refuge Law Enforcement; Conservation Planning and Refuge Maintenance.

Putting Wildlife First
The Wildlife and Habitat Management program is where the actual hands-on work to protect wildlife and habitats gets done. This work includes inventorying and monitoring animal populations and habitat quality; restoring wetlands, forests, grasslands and ocean areas; controlling invasive species; conducting prescribed burns and addressing wildlife disease outbreaks. For instance, this program restored wetlands and streams in a mine-damaged part of Nevada’s Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge and reintroduced the speckled dace, a tiny fish that had been extinct there since the 1950s.

Including People Too
Our wildlife heritage belongs to all present and future generations of Americans, and the Visitor Services program works to provide magnificent recreational and educational experiences to about 45 million wildlife enthusiasts each year, whose spending generates more than $4.2 billion and nearly 35,000 private sector jobs in local economies. People visit refuges to hunt, fish, photograph nature, observe wildlife and learn about the environment. The Visitor Services program staffs visitor centers and other facilities, and provides interpretive signs and brochures, tours and structured classroom or outdoor activities. They also manage the network of 40,000 volunteers that do 20 percent of the work across the Refuge System.

National Wildlife Refuge Law Enforcement Officers (Credit: Stefania Moehring)

Protecting ‘Em All
The Refuge Law Enforcement program is staffed with professional law enforcement officers who work to protect not only wildlife and habitats, but also Refuge System facilities and the people who come to enjoy them. Funding goes to emergency managers, field officers, regional law enforcement chiefs, training, equipment and supplies, all of which go to prevent damage or destruction of habitats and facilities, drug trafficking, burglary and other crimes. These workers play an important role in places like Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, located along Arizona’s border with Mexico, which has been heavily impacted by smugglers of both people and drugs. The current law enforcement force for the entire refuge system is just 287, but an analysis by the International Association of Chiefs of Police recommended a total of 845 full-time law enforcement officers.

Getting Conservation Right
Conservation Planning may sound boring, but this program is where the FWS develops Comprehensive Conservation Plans that ensure refuges are managed in a balanced, efficient and coordinated way. Refuge managers and planners work closely with the public, states, tribes, private landowners and other stakeholders to develop the plans for each refuge, which must be revised and updated every 15 years.

A walkway at Oregon’s Tualatin National Wildlife Refuge

Keeping it Running
The Maintenance program takes care of the Refuge System’s physical infrastructure — assets that are valued at $26.5 billion. These facilities include a fleet of vehicles and heavy equipment, visitor centers, storage buildings, observation platforms, walkways, roads, bridges, trails, fencing and water management structures, and maintaining such a varied array of assets is an important part of conservation work. For instance, this program maintains and repairs heavy equipment needed to remove thick swaths of invasive plants at Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge in California.

If funding for the National Wildlife Refuge System is cut further, it will have disastrous consequences for all these essential programs. The Refuge System already operates on a shoestring budget of only $3.24 per acre — just about half of what is needed!

Defenders is a member of a coalition of groups called the Cooperative Alliance for Refuge Enhancement (CARE), which released a report this week called Fiscal Cliff Dwellers: America’s Wildlife Refuges on the Edge. This report describes the top 10 impacts that the fiscal cliff or additional funding cuts will have on the Refuge System:

• Visitor centers and even entire refuges will be forced to close.
• Opportunities for hunting and fishing will be lost.
• Without staff to coordinate them or resources to do the work, volunteers will be turned away.
• Local economies that rely on income from refuge visitors will lose revenue.
• Without enough people to enforce laws protecting refuges, their wildlife and their visitors, we will see an increase of poaching, vandalism and drug smuggling on refuges.
• People who enjoy birding and watching wildlife will lose the opportunity to do so.
• Without the staff or equipment needed to remove them, invasive species will spread.
• Habitat restoration and fire management will be halted.
• Responses to devastation caused by natural disasters will be delayed.
• The newly-initiated inventory and monitoring program, which tracks the size and health of wildlife populations and habitat, and can help alert refuge managers to potential problems, could be terminated.

The report calls on Congress to abandon these draconian funding cuts and instead, fully fund the Refuge System. Remember, the many species of wildlife that rely on these refuges for survival cannot speak for themselves — we need to be their voice. Please contact your members of Congress and ask them not to cut funding for national wildlife refuge and other programs that wildlife need.

Kelly Catlett, California Representative

Wetlands at Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge (Photo ©American West Conservation)

For wildlife enthusiasts, visiting the six national wildlife refuges in the Klamath Basin is an amazing experience. Located on the Oregon-California border, the six refuges — Klamath Marsh, Upper Klamath, Bear Valley, Clear Lake, Lower Klamath, and Tule Lake — are an important stop on the Pacific Flyway providing habitat for 353 bird species as they migrate from breeding grounds in the north to wintering grounds in the south. Fall and spring bring millions of ducks, geese and swans to the area during their annual migrations, and the refuges are home to the largest winter bald eagle population in the contiguous United States.

The refuges are breathtaking, but I actually wasn’t there to view wildlife. I went to the Klamath Basin to learn about a program operated on the Tule Lake and Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuges that could provide a model for how agriculture and wetlands can not only co-exist, but benefit one another. In the United States, nearly half of our original wetlands have been drained and converted to other uses, including agriculture. Finding a way for wetlands and agriculture to co-exist can slow the loss of wetlands and keep much-needed habitat available to a variety of wetland-dependant species, including ducks, geese, swans, and other migratory birds.

Tule Lake and Lower Klamath Refuges are unique in that their management allows commercial agriculture on the refuge. In fact, both wetland wildlife habitat and commercial agriculture are part of the refuge’s purpose. Refuge managers struggled for decades to reconcile these seemingly conflicting land uses.  Under traditional management techniques, wetland areas were flooded permanently. After several years of continuous flooding, the wetland areas became so thick with tules and other plants that wildlife stopped using them. Eventually, managers hit on the idea of rotating wetlands through the commercial farm fields on the refuges.

The American White Pelican is one of the many species of birds that benefit from the Walking Wetlands program (Photo ©Dan Dzurisin)

As part of an effort dubbed the “Walking Wetlands” Program, refuge managers began to experiment by flooding fields that were of such poor quality that no one wanted to farm them. Using specific water management techniques, they restored former cropland to productive wetland habitat. Then, after several years of flooding, fields were dried and returned to agricultural production. Allowing a more natural regime of flooded and dry periods produced healthier, more attractive wetlands. During this test project, the experimental walking wetlands only represented 4% of refuge lands, but they supported 30-90% of some waterbird species.

The biggest surprise came when, after several years as a wetland, the fields were drained and returned to agricultural production. Farmers in the “Walking Wetlands” program have found that after wetland cycles of one to four years, they don’t need to fumigate their soil or apply pesticides and fertilizers. Yields of certain crops even improved by 25%, and farmers discovered that the pest and disease control benefits even allow for production organically. In other words, farmers could produce more and better-quality crops with less cost and effort.

©American West Conservation

From this initial experiment, the program has grown to include 600 to 1,200 acres of year-round and seasonally flooded wetlands. It has been so successful that neighboring landowners have even begun to incorporate wetlands into their operations on private land outside the refuge. The “Walking Wetlands” Program has demonstrated that wetlands and agriculture don’t have to be at odds. They can be integrated in a way that keeps the ecosystem healthy and supports the economies of rural communities.

We’re looking at how the same methods could be put into use to compensate for the losses of other wetlands and farms like those in California’s Yolo Bypass. This large, undeveloped, leveed expanse of land shunts water around Sacramento to relieve pressure on the city’s levees during high water periods. There are proposals to re-operate the Yolo Bypass to hold water more frequently and for longer durations, which would benefit migrating salmon, steelhead and a couple other species of fish. But the practice would also displace current waterfowl habitat, and potentially make farming inside the bypass more difficult. Learning about programs like Walking Wetlands, which can use swaths of land for both purposes, gives us a new option to bring to the table — one that could help out farmers and waterfowl alike whether applied inside or outside the bypass.

Julie Kates, Federal Lands Associate

Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, Photo: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

It’s the second full week of October, so in addition to being Wolf Awareness Week, it’s also National Wildlife Refuge Week – an annual celebration of America’s National Wildlife Refuge System.  The Refuge System, established in 1903 by President Theodore Roosevelt, is the only network of federal lands dedicated first and foremost to wildlife conservation.  Its 560 national wildlife refuges and 38 wetland management districts protect approximately 150 million acres of vital habitat for the nation’s fish, wildlife and plants, including more than 280 endangered or threatened species.  With at least one refuge found in every state and territory, and within an hour of most major metropolitan areas, the Refuge System also provides great wildlife watching, photography, education, and other recreation opportunities for its 47 million visitors every year.

As the anchor for America’s conservation lands, protecting the Refuge System is a top priority for me and my colleagues at Defenders.  Here are some of the things we’re doing to make sure the Refuge System stays strong for all the National Wildlife Refuge Weeks to come:

• We’re adding our expertise to help the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service develop a more effective, climate-smart framework for managing and expanding the Refuge System.

• We’re safeguarding the iconic Arctic National Wildlife Refuge both by blocking damaging legislation that would open it up to oil and gas development and by promoting stronger legal protections for the refuge’s sensitive coastal plain, which serves as the most important onshore denning habitat for America’s threatened polar bears and the calving ground of the Porcupine caribou herd.

• We’re fighting a harmful proposal to build a road through a congressionally-designated wilderness area within Alaska’s Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. Known as the refuge’s biological heart, this area provides critically important habitat for hundreds of thousands of migrating birds, including 98 percent of Pacific black brant and nearly all of the world’s emperor geese.

• We’re working to support the expansion of national wildlife refuges in the greater Everglades ecosystem, which will help keep the dispersal zone of the endangered Florida panther safe from development.

• We’re working with our partners in the Cooperative Alliance for Refuge Enhancement (CARE) to advocate for greater agency funding so that the Refuge System has the resources it needs to carry out its conservation mission.

We encourage you to celebrate National Wildlife Refuge Week this year by getting to know your local refuge.  And check back with us often to get updates on what we’re doing to protect refuges around the country and how you can support our national wildlife refuges and the wildlife that rely on them throughout the year.

This summer’s issue sports a wide-eyed harbor seal on the cover–one of this year’s honorable mentions in our annual photo contest. Go inside to get the story behind the grand prize winner’s grizzly bear shot.

This edition also tackles the problems of lead in endangered condors and highlights the critical importance of bees to our food supply. You’ll also find grim statistics behind Wildlife Services war on predators and the animals they kill by accident. On the climate change front, there’s an on-the-ground example of what is already happening at a national wildlife refuge on coastal land in Delaware.

And if you don’t yet subscribe to the hard copy, which comes chock-full of beautiful photos not featured on the website, get it delivered right to your doorstep by joining Defenders today.

A few years ago the road stretched beyond the guardrail.

The road just ended. Literally. The van we were in pulled right up to the steel highway railing, beyond which lay some crumbled asphalt, a short spit of beach, and the wide open expanse of Delaware Bay. There was no parking lot, no cul-de-sac to turn around; just unfinished road and a steel barrier.

Only a few years ago the end of the road was farther out. So was the sea. And decades ago, the water’s edge was hundreds of yards out, evidenced by an old WWII-era pier, whose remnant pilings jutted way out in the now open water. This coastline was changing, and changing fast.

Our group of conservation organizations and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service staff spilled out of the van. Standing on the shores of the Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge, one of the largest protected areas in the state of Delaware, we were on a trip to better understand the issues facing the coastal national wildlife refuges of Delaware and the eastern shore of Virginia. We followed refuge manager Michael Stroeh down the beach, tripping over old stems and roots of marsh grasses and shrubs that poked through the sand as reminders of what was here only a few short years before. It was April, and though the region had experienced the warmest March on record, the wind was biting cold. I cinched the hood of my wind breaker over my head as we stopped our jaunt up the beach.

All aboard the airboat!

Prime Hook is divided into three units, separated by roads that run from the inland to the coast. The roads also serve as dikes. In the 1980s, to make up for lost freshwater wetlands elsewhere, the Fish and Wildlife Service used the dikes to make a wetland impoundment system, managing the water levels to convert the once tidal, saltwater marshes into freshwater marshes – better habitat for migrating ducks, geese, and shorebirds. But once considered an innovative solution, this system now makes the refuge extremely vulnerable to the effects of sea-level rise and increased storm surge.

Taking to the water

We boarded an airboat for the next part of our tour. (If you have never been on an airboat, they are LOUD, even with earplugs and [slightly rusty] external ear protection.) I reminded myself that I was still outside, in nature, at a national wildlife refuge, on the water—rare for a D.C.-based conservationist.

We skipped across the water to the interior of the marsh. We were in the middle of a 4,000 acre wetland that used to be full of emergent vegetation. But where marsh grasses should have surrounded us, it was open water in every direction. The marsh was gone.

“In 2009, a Veteran’s Day Storm created the inlet and brought in the slug of sand and saltwater with its storm surge, killing all of the freshwater vegetation,” explained Susan Guiteras, the refuge’s supervisory biologist. “If we had been able to close the inlet quickly, we may have been able to change the salinity and reestablish the marsh plants. But that would have only been a temporary fix anyway. Once the freshwater plants died, their roots couldn’t hold the marsh muck together, so the peat just washed away, deepening the water to a depth that even saltwater-tolerant plants could not establish.” The habitat had simply washed away.

Prime Hook refuge provides important habitat for migratory birds.

Preparing for the future

The scenario at Prime Hook reflects a broader challenge for refuges in a warming world: as the climate changes, we can no longer count on protected areas delivering the same benefits and habitats they once did. Conservationists need to understand how the impacts in one place affect species and ecosystems over a much larger area, and what can be done to help them adapt to those changes.

Fortunately, the refuge has been working closely with the state of Delaware to strategize about conserving the entire “Bayshore” landscape, planning how to slowly transition the freshwater reservoirs into more resilient saltwater systems to avoid a catastrophic loss from a future storm. Federal and state agencies, conservation groups and other partners are beginning to follow suit, mapping out existing conservation areas, developing shared conservation priorities, and partnering to achieve those priorities across the landscape.

Prime Hook is just one of the first refuges to experience these changes in such a dramatic way. There are over 160 coastal national wildlife refuges across the country. These areas need to begin taking steps to prepare for the changes to come. And with waters inching up along our coasts all the time, there isn’t a moment to waste.

Learn more:

For more information about the impacts of sea-level rise on national wildlife refuges, and recommendations to help them prepare, see Defenders’ recently-released report: National Wildlife Refuges and Sea-Level Rise: Lessons from the Frontlines.

The Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1983, and is the only refuge created for the purpose of protecting manatees.

BREAKING: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today announced the establishment of a manatee refuge in the waters of Florida’s Kings Bay that will expand protections for manatees at Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge.

The new rules designate most of Kings Bay as a slow-speed area, limit high-speed activities in a popular summer water sports area, provide temporary no-entry areas and allow for expansion of “manatee sanctuary” areas where waterborne activities would be prohibited on especially cold days to shelter manatees. The regulations also ban chasing or pursuing manatees, disturbing or touching them while they are feeding or resting, and separating a mother and a calf.

Elizabeth Fleming, Florida representative for Defenders of Wildlife, said, “Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge is the most important wintering site for manatees in northwest Florida and one of the best places to see manatees in the entire state. By adopting these new rules, the Fish and Wildlife Service has taken a first step towards helping the refuge better serve its purpose—to safeguard this vulnerable marine mammal. However, without the removal of the dangerous high-speed water sports zone, manatees and people will continue to be at risk in Kings Bay.”

Manatee deaths reached a record high of 766 in 2010, followed by the death of over 450 animals in 2011. Nearly 400 of these died from exposure during an extended period of cold weather.

Due to its naturally occurring warm water springs, Kings Bay, Fla. has been increasingly popular among wintering manatees. But despite the existing network of sanctuaries and other protections in Kings Bay, it remains a very dangerous waterway as manatees are hit by fast-moving boats and harassed by tourists wanting to interact with them. Having flexibility for managers to increase the area and duration of warm-water sanctuary areas will help ensure that manatees in Kings Bay will survive cold winters.

YOU DID IT! Defenders supporters generated almost 54,000 comments in favor of stronger protections for manatees in Kings Bay. Thanks for all your help!