Defenders Magazine

A Hundred Years of Wildlife Refuges

The 94-million-acre national wildlife refuge system celebrates its centennial amid new challenges, funding shortages.

© USFWS

A national wildlife refuge manager doesn’t have just one job. He or she has three, or four, or even more. Mike Bryant, who manages the Alligator River and Pea Island wildlife refuges on the North Carolina coast, has a stack of tasks as tall as the white cedars he works in.

Bryant is directly responsible for 158,000 acres of refuge land, ranging from barrier island beaches to rare coastal forest remnants, and he oversees the managers of three other refuges. In the late 1980s, one of his refuges was chosen for the high-profile reintroduction of the endangered red wolf, and Bryant is still heavily involved with the management of that population. He also tries to prepare the refuges for wildfires, not a simple task in this part of the world; the deep peat soil can burn for years, and the forest is so thick that "if you throw a pencil at it, it bounces right back at you," he says.

Bryant and his one staff biologist have plenty to do indoors, too. They’re regularly at the table with the Department of Defense, which has two active bombing ranges surrounded by refuge land; the state Department of Transportation, which is constantly trying to build more and bigger roads near the refuges; and local county officials, who manage a busy construction-debris landfill within refuge boundaries.

Bryant also spends some evenings and weekends roaming his refuges, looking for timber thieves, arresting poachers and writing speeding tickets. He shares the police work with only two other busy staffers. "I can’t think about it too much, or I’d go numb," he says of his workload. "I just react to things."

The national wildlife refuge system stretches from Florida to the Aleutians, from Maine to the most remote Pacific islands. Its 538 refuges cover 94 million acres — more land than the national park system — and it includes some of the best wildlife habitat in the world. It preserves a home for many species found nowhere else in the world and hosts some 38 million wildlife enthusiasts each year. So why, as the refuge system kicks off its centennial celebration, are its employees scrambling for time to celebrate their own birthdays?

One hundred years ago, legions of bounty hunters were scouring the swamps and forests of Florida, looking for songbirds to adorn society ladies’ hats. Public outcry over the practice, led by the fledgling Audubon Society, helped persuade President Theodore Roosevelt to establish what is now considered the very first wildlife refuge. The three-acre Pelican Island Bird Reservation on Florida’s Atlantic coast — since expanded and renamed the Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge — remains a haven for brown pelicans and the endangered wood stork.

Roosevelt didn’t stop with Pelican Island. He created 55 refuges through executive order, most designed to protect migratory birds. Congress soon followed his lead, approving several refuges and game preserves in the early 1900s.

The refuges multiplied quickly and haphazardly, steered by the whims of individual presidents, legislators and constituents. Only in the late 1920s did federal legislation recognize the refuges as part of a nationwide system, and not until 1956 did the refuge system find its present home within the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), part of the Department of the Interior.

In recent years, the refuge system has continued to swell. The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act added more than 53 million acres of Alaskan land to the system in 1980, and new refuges have been created almost every year.

The system has also gotten much more complex. Many refuges were established to beef up flocks for bird hunters, keep hungry waterfowl out of farmers’ fields or offset the environmental damage done by federal dam and canal projects. Now, refuges also oversee 20 million acres of wilderness areas, protect more than 250 endangered species and manage a variety of public uses.

Refuges have acquired another, even more critical role. They’re the only public lands primarily intended for the benefit of wildlife, and in some places they are animals’ last lines of defense against urban and suburban sprawl. While national parks and wilderness areas usually protect the most scenic, often high-elevation landscapes, national wildlife refuges are found in the not-so-sexy wetlands and grasslands that animals love. Increasing development in these rich lowlands has made some refuges crucial to species’ very survival: In coastal California, refuges are literally the only significant stopovers left for migrating birds.

In the early days of the refuge system, Rachel Carson was one of the few to recognize this greater goal of wildlife protection. Civilization "takes away, little by little, the land that is suitable for wildlife," she wrote in an introduction to a collection of essays about wildlife refuges. "Refuges resist this trend by saving some areas from encroachment and by preserving in them, or restoring where necessary, the conditions that wild things need in order to live."

The refuges’ patchwork history haunts the system’s employees. Unlike the National Park Service or the U.S. Forest Service, the refuge system spent decades as a loose collection of lands with no strong mission statement or set of management guidelines. Refuges have continued to struggle with their low profile and blurry identity.

Refuge managers say they’re regularly confused with forest rangers, state park officials, and almost anyone else in an earth-toned uniform. The words "U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service" often draw a blank from the general public, and even many refuge visitors don’t know which agency is hosting their trip.

"Our biggest problem is public apathy," says George Chandler, manager of the North Louisiana National Wildlife Refuge Complex. "If we were as well known as the National Park Service, we’d be a lot better off."

Since most management decisions are made locally or regionally, few refuges are rallying points for national environmental groups. Only certain major changes — such as whether to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), which was sanctioned by Congress under ANILCA — need congressional approval.

These image problems are partly to blame for the refuges’ major cash-flow problems. FWS is responsible not only for national wildlife refuges but also for endangered species management and wildlife law enforcement. Refuges and these other already-overburdened programs often lose out to better-known programs during the federal budget process.

These issues combine to create some very stressed-out refuge managers. Since the refuge system can’t afford staff for all its refuges, managers are frequently put in charge of "complexes" of widely scattered refuges. Hundreds of refuges can’t pay for basic infrastructure like visitor centers or restrooms, and some can’t even print brochures. Many depend on the more than 200 nonprofit "friends" groups (See sidebar) to help them paper over the funding gaps.

The troubles have also translated into ugly threats to sensitive wildlife. Exotic grapefruit trees, pepper plants and Australian pines have invaded Pelican Island, and erosion has scoured away more than half the refuge. Though habitat restoration efforts have begun, money remains scarce.

Other refuges have been battered by oil drilling, toxic spills and massive floods, and few have had the political or financial muscle to defend themselves. John Martin, the former manager of the gigantic Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, says he dealt with a particularly tricky problem: In the 1960s, refuge lands in the Aleutian Islands were hit by three huge underground atomic tests. Debris from military installations on the islands is still awaiting cleanup and is thought to be partly responsible for unusually high levels of contaminants in the local sea otter population.

These aren’t just isolated horror stories. "Every refuge has a dizzying array of issues affecting it," says Defenders of Wildlife refuge program director Noah Matson. "Some of them seem small, but they really add up."

In the late 1980s, such problems finally began to get some national attention. A Congressional report said "incompatible uses" such as mining, grazing and off-road vehicle use were severely eroding wildlife and wildlife habitat within the refuge system. A widely publicized FWS review, intended to disprove the claims, showed the situation was even worse.

Defenders, the National Audubon Society and The Wilderness Society, all of whom had worked on problems on individual refuges, banded together and sued FWS over this endemic mismanagement. The suit, settled early in the Clinton administration, triggered an even more detailed internal agency review; the resulting reports, which attempted to describe all the management problems on all of the nation’s wildlife refuges, covered thousands of pages.

Environmental groups had long recognized the need for a clearer, system-wide mission for national wildlife refuges. In the early 1990s, the movement to shore up the refuge system got some very particular direction. Defenders of Wildlife, The Wilderness Society, National Audubon Society, Sierra Club and National Wildlife Refuge Association formally proposed a bill aimed to establish a clear process for determining "compatible uses" of refuges, set out refuge planning requirements and require the refuge system as a whole to conserve wildlife and plant diversity.

The bill inched its way through Congress. In 1995, notorious anti-environmentalist Don Young (R-Alaska) became chairman of the House Resources Committee and co-sponsored an alternative, much weaker version of the bill. Defenders and other groups mounted a campaign to kill it, and then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt managed to pull together a series of negotiations.

"The pendulum swung back to our side," remembers Robert Dewey, Defenders of Wildlife’s vice president for government relations. In 1997, President Clinton signed the National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act.

Though the final version was not as sweeping as Defenders’ original proposal, it gave refuge managers a stronger, "wildlife first" mission statement and required long-term planning on each refuge. It directed the system to maintain the "biological integrity of ecosystems" as well as individual species.

The law has "provided a mission for the refuge system that it never had before," says Matson. "The political and legal framework is in place to make the refuge system part of an integrated system of habitat, which we really need."

The battle on behalf of refuges has now shifted to the financial realm. Defenders, along with about 20 other environmental and hunting and fishing groups, was a founding member of the Cooperative Alliance for Refuge Enhancement, or CARE, in 1995. This diverse and unusual coalition has successfully fought for more funding and more recognition for the refuge system, and the system budget has grown steadily each year. CARE’s goal is to secure significant additional funding increases in recognition of the refuge centennial. While the bill that funds the refuge system will not be completed until Congress returns in 2003, this year’s proposed increase of about $57 million would be the largest ever, and more than 100 members of Congress have signed letters of support for even more funding. "We’re still woefully short," says Matson, "but those increases wouldn’t have been accomplished without CARE."

Despite its continuing problems, the refuge system inspires tremendous loyalty — among visitors and activists and among its very busy employees. Refuge managers, active and retired alike, often call it "the greatest job in the world," and it doesn’t sound like they’re exaggerating.

Gene Hachette, who spent most of his 29 years with the refuge system at Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge in western New York, says the rewards were worth every headache.

"There has never been and will never again be a legacy of land like this," he says. "Never before in history has a bunch of human critters dedicated as many acres of woods and streams and wetlands to wildlife."

The 1997 National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act required the Secretary of Interior to "ensure that the biological integrity, diversity, and environmental health of the (refuge system) are maintained for the benefit of present and future generations of Americans." These words formalized a shift already taking place at many refuges. Though most were created for the benefit of particular migratory birds, game animals or imperiled species, not entire ecosystems, "biological integrity" has gradually become equally important. Managers now oversee fire-science programs, protect rare plant species and turn old farm fields into productive wildlife habitat. In many cases, though, refuge funding shortages still stand in the way of full-scale habitat restoration projects.

Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge

The first warden of the nation’s oldest wildlife refuge chased vandals off Florida’s Pelican Island for a salary of $1 a month. It wasn’t foolproof protection for the resident brown pelicans, but it was about as good as it got for the next 100 years. The Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge has been effectively unsupervised for much of its history, and current manager Paul Tritaik is only the third full-time caretaker of the island.

Despite the chronic gaps in funding and leadership at the refuge, local citizens have rallied to protect the island and its rare nesting grounds. In the 1960s, they persuaded the state to stop a planned development next to the refuge. In the 1990s, another grassroots effort enabled the refuge to buy a piece of land connecting it with nearby Archie Carr refuge. The refuge is now about 5,300 acres; without the buffer provided by the additional land, says Tritaik, "I’m not sure we would have any birds on the island today."

The refuge has also suffered some major environmental problems, including stubborn invasions of exotic grapefruit trees and pepper plants. The island has been slowly eroded by natural wave action and boat wakes, but no one noticed the problem until 1993, when Tritaik inspected some aerial photos during his first year at the refuge. By that time, more than half of the 5.5-acre island had washed away.

But thanks to the centennial celebration, life is improving at Pelican Island. The refuge has long been a part of various refuge "complexes," but in October it finally gained independent status. Tritaik now has a small staff, and funding from federal and state agencies has helped the refuge restore some of the eroded habitat.

Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge

A network of shallow lakes once covered much of the western United States. When the lakes dried, only tiny oases remained, isolated from one another by the harsh expanses of the Great Basin and Mojave deserts. Though unique communities of wildlife and plants evolved in each of these oases, many were eventually destroyed by human development or their water drained for use in urban areas.

One of the few remaining intact oases now lies within the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, in the southern tip of Nevada and just to the east of Death Valley National Park. In the 1970s, a developer wanted to build 20,000 homes in the area, a plan that would have surely obliterated the springs and their fragile residents. The Nature Conservancy purchased 14,000 acres of the threatened land, then turned it over to FWS for the protection and recovery of endangered plants and wildlife.

Today, Ash Meadows remains a haven for imperiled species. The springs are home to 24 species not found anywhere else, including ten species of snails and three species of desert pupfish. The Devil’s Hole pupfish, possibly the most restricted species in the world, lives in one small limestone pool.

In the midst of these high-stakes wildlife management challenges, refuge manager Eric Hopson says he doesn’t have much time or funding to look after the ecosystem as a whole. Fifteen percent of the plant species found on the refuge are exotic, and the endangered pupfish compete with largemouth bass, tropical fish and predatory bullfrogs, but Hopson has only two full-time staffers to help him rein in these problem species. "I think it’s possible to control exotics," he says, "but we’re going to have to throw a lot of money and manpower at them."

Kenai National Wildlife Refuge

South of Anchorage, the spruce and birch forests of the Kenai Peninsula stretch south into the Gulf of Alaska. Even in the early 1900s, the peninsula was famous among sportsmen for its abundance of moose and other big game, and hunters championed the creation of the Kenai National Moose Range in 1941. The 2- million-acre area, now the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, still hosts several thousand big-game hunters each year. Its conservation work, however, reaches far beyond moose and their habitat.

Refuge biologists now study dozens of species, including wolves, snowshoe hares, caribou, loons and fish — "everything from insects to fire history," says refuge manager Robin West. The management makeover was spurred by the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), which requires all Alaska refuges to "conserve fish and wildlife populations and habitats in their natural diversity." Though refuges in the lower 48 now have a similarly broad mission statement, it wasn’t made explicit until the National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act of 1997.

To many refuge managers, Kenai might seem rich in people power, with about 40 full-time employees and 30 seasonal workers. But the refuge also has some complex responsibilities. Habitat types range from tundra to wetlands, and 1.3 million acres of the refuge are protected as wilderness. Half a million hunters, canoeists, hikers and wildlife watchers visit each year. If this weren’t enough to keep the refuge staff busy, part of the refuge has been open to oil and gas drilling since the 1950s. Though the refuge has already been polluted by more than 350 toxic spills and industrial explosions, natural-gas drilling continues on 250,000 acres of refuge land.

Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge

The funding crisis on national wildlife refuges has had at least one positive result: It has inspired refuge neighbors to organize more than 200 "friends" groups. Members of these nonprofit, all-volunteer groups build trails, pull weeds and even run bulldozers. They also raise significant amounts of money from local communities, write grants for refuge restoration projects and lobby for funding on Capitol Hill.

Evan Hirsche, the executive director of a friends umbrella group called the National Wildlife Refuge Association, says these thousands of local refuge advocates "have become the voice that refuges don’t have."

One of the oldest friends groups is the "Ding" Darling Wildlife Society, which formed in 1982 to support the J.N. "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Florida’s Sanibel Island. The society’s members raise about $70,000 each year for the refuge — money that has funded maps, guidebooks, signs and other much-needed materials. Members are now collecting funds for a new environmental education center.

Molly Krival, an early leader of the wildlife society, says her group got frequent phone calls from people interested in starting their own friends groups. Many refuge managers were resistant to the groups at first, since most had been trained to protect refuges from people — not invite them in to help. But Allyson Rowell, then head of day-to-day operations for the FWS Division of Refuges in Washington, D.C., realized that a network of friends groups might be a lifesaver for the underfunded refuge system. "We needed to get our message out beyond the boundary signs," she says. "We needed to build a constituency." When Krival, Rowell and several other early friends activists crossed paths in the early 1990s, a movement began.

In 1995, the FWS started sending agency staffers and experienced friends members to advise fledgling groups. Thanks in part to this mentoring program, the number of friends groups rose steadily, and the number of volunteers on refuges also exploded. In the early 1990s, there were about 8,000 volunteers working on refuges, and by 2000 there were 37,000.

"It’s contagious," says Hirsche. "Managers see the results, and they say ‘Wow, I’ve got to have a friends group.’"

The network continues to grow. Two hundred and seventy friends group members from 43 states attended the first National Refuge Friends Conference in Washington, D.C., last February, and the National Wildlife Refuge Association is planning a similar conference for early 2003. Molly Krival has continued her work with the friends movement, and she’s now vice president of what may be the most far-flung friends group of all: the Friends of Midway Atoll.

Even on this isolated South Pacific refuge, says Krival, it wasn’t hard to find allies. During her first visit, she had lunch with a few fellow visitors and told them about her interest in organizing a group for the atoll. Her newfound "friends" eagerly signed on, she says, and "I had a board before I’d been there an hour."

Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge

The 26,000-acre Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, tucked into an irregular, marshy peninsula on the Chesapeake Bay, is one of the dozens of refuges originally established to protect migratory waterfowl. Tundra swans, geese and more than 20 species of ducks winter in the refuge, and wood ducks, blue-winged teal and several other species nest here each year.

Tom Miller, the refuge’s public-use ranger, says "a lot of the budget is still spent on trying to make waterfowl happy," but Blackwater has more recently expanded its focus to include a prescribed-burning program and endangered species management. The threatened bald eagle nests frequently on the refuge, and the endangered Delmarva fox squirrel calls the refuge home.

Blackwater’s biggest current management challenge may be the nutria, a large invasive rodent. Nutria have displaced native muskrats and munched through several thousand acres of marshland. "When nutria eat in an area, the ground just turns to mud," says Miller. The refuge has just finished a two-year study of the rodents and has launched a major trapping effort. But nutria aren’t the only forces destroying refuge habitat. Since the refuge was established in 1933, more than 5,000 acres of native vegetation have been lost to rising sea levels, wind and wave erosion, and high salinity during droughts.

Though Blackwater faces many of the same funding shortages as other refuges, it enjoys the support of a particularly well-established and active nonprofit "friends" group. The Friends of Blackwater helps staff the visitors’ center, which hosts as many as 100,000 visitors a year, and it’s raising funds for a refuge expansion project. With friends funding, proceeds from federal duck-hunting stamps and assistance from other nonprofits such as The Nature Conservancy, the refuge hopes eventually to purchase another 14,000 acres in its watershed.

Michelle Nijhuis is a writer living in Paonia, Colorado.