#national wildlife refuge

[jadafitch]

Petit Manan Lighthouse, Petit Manan Island, Steuben. Possibly my favorite lighthouse. In the summer, this island is home to hundreds of birds. Including Atlantic puffins, arctic, common and roseate terns, as well as black guillemots and many more. Decided I couldn't draw them all, but here's a couple attempts to try and capture the island's vibes. Can you spot the oystercatchers? MERCH

[wandering-jana]

Assateague Lighthouse.

Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge, Virginia

2021

[newbirder]

A Bald Eagle surveys the landscape at a Louisiana national wildlife refuge.

[dwmmphotography]

And now, some desert borbs.

Gambel's quail.

And that most iconic of desert borbs (southwestern USA), the greater roadrunner.

[rebeccathenaturalist]

You have NO IDEA HOW HAPPY THIS MAKES ME!!!!!! Willapa NWR is my "home refuge", so to speak. I've volunteered there for hours, spent a ton of time walking the trails, and it is incredibly dear to me. They're already protecting and restoring thousands of acres of land, from tidal wetlands to old-growth forests to dune habitat and more. This funding approval means that Willapa NWR will receive $1,255,248 to acquire 239 acres of land for the purpose of preserving waterfowl and other wildlife habitat.

Habitat loss is THE single biggest cause of species endangerment and extinction, so the more we're able to protect, the better--especially if we can create wildlife corridors between sections. Biodiverse ecosystems also have a better chance of weathering the effects of climate change.

Along with the habitat acquired for Willapa NWR, funding was also approved to purchase land for other Refuges:

Cat Island National Wildlife Refuge in Louisiana – $1,466,000 to acquire 548 acres.

Clarks River National Wildlife Refuge in Kentucky – $6,621,000 to acquire 2,482 acres.

Green River National Wildlife Refuge in Kentucky – $11,372,000 to acquire 1,335 acres.

Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge in New Hampshire – $1,066,450 to acquire 797 acres.

The funding was acquired through the sales of Federal Duck Stamps; 98% of the money from these stamps goes into purchasing and maintaining Refuge lands. While these were originally created to raise funds for waterfowl land by requiring waterfowl hunters to buy a stamp with their license each year, anyone can buy a Duck Stamp. There are lots of non-hunting collectors who buy them for the art, and the annual art contest draws talent from across the country. The Junior Duck Stamp Program allows young artists K-12 to enter their own contest while also learning about conservation. (It also was the topic of one of my more infamous posts here on Tumblr!)

[thew0rsethingsgettheharderifight]

i went outside. touched grass even

[inthecityofgoodabode]

October 2024: The First Week

I wish this image was just a little sharper because the subject posed perfectly:

Saturday's harvest from the front yard volunteers:

We drove across the bridge into Arkansas in search of fish. This was our first stop. The water looked fishy but nothing was biting:

A mystery at the edge of some flooded hardwood bottomland:

We spent the rest of the day hitting different little ponds along the highway back to Memphis. We caught some fish... bluegill, pumpkinseeds & a couple of crappie but all were too small to bring home.

The last pond we fished. The yellow decoy duck in the background that someone chunked in the pond is a nice touch:

Reflection in the rear window of a 24 year old:

Sunday harvest:

I wished I could have gotten closer to this warbler who stopped off in our backyard on its migration:

[chaialevi]

Bogue Chitto Wildlife Refuge, a Louisiana Bayou in Polaroid [x]

[icelynodette]

Homeschool Day Ankeny Hill Nature Center 2024

[ambermaitrejean]

August in Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge. Commerce City, Colorado. Photos by Amber Maitrejean

[admiralgiggles]

An ode to sunset

Sometimes I have to break my own arbitrary rules.

[jadafitch]

Matinicus Rock Light, Penobscot Bay, Matinicus, Maine. Hunting and eating puffins was common practice in Maine over 100 years ago. The first lighthouse keepers on the rock were also wardens, hired by The American Ornithologists Union. They were tasked with protecting The United State's last remaining pair of Atlantic puffins, as well as many other commonly hunted seabird species. Today, Matinicus Rock is owned by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Maine Coastal Islands National Wildlife Refuge, and is cooperatively managed by the National Audubon Society and MCINWR. Thanks to their work and the work of Project Puffin, there are over 500 pairs of nesting puffins, plus 400 pairs of razorbills, 1,000 pairs of terns, about 700 pairs of laughing gulls, and more.

[wandering-jana]

Sika deer are native to East Asia. They are small and keep their spots throughout their lives. They were introduced to the eastern United States. Today, they can be found on Assateague Island, Maryland and Virginia. I found this lady in the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge, Virginia.

Check out Chincoteague:

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Bison graze in the snow at Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, near Denver.

© Michael Levine-Clark / Flickr

[dwmmphotography]

A very little javelina (aka collared peccary) at the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in mid-February 2023. The species does not have a specific breeding season, and young may be encountered at any time of year. Not to be confused with feral hogs or wild boars, the peccaries are native to the Americas and form a distinct family Tayassuidae that is closely related to the Suidae (standard issue pig family). My quick internet search turns up no solid name for young javelina/peccary. "Reds" due to their fur color is what I've found.

[rebeccathenaturalist]

Okay, so there's been some good conversation in the comments/replies to this post, in case you haven't had a chance to take a peek. However, I wanted to address this one in particular by @xzacloudx because A) it's going to take more space than I can fit in the replies, and B) it touches on a topic near and dear to my heart.

First, I'm not going to get into the "is hunting good or bad" debate right now, because it's complex and there are a lot of nuanced perspectives there, and it's really easy for the debate to get super heated.

But, looking at the facts, the roots of the National Wildlife Refuge System are in preserving land for waterfowl for hunters, starting with Theodore Roosevelt creating the first National Wildlife refuge in 1903, and then continuing with Herbert Hoover signing the Migratory Bird Conservation Act in 1929 which allowed the government to set aside land for migratory waterfowl. That act was followed by the Migratory Bird Hunting Act in 1934, which established the Federal Duck Stamp as a means of raising funds for these protected lands. To date, it is the single most successful government conservation program, with 98% of proceeds going to purchasing and maintaining over 500 National Wildlife Refuges that preserve over 150 million acres as wildlife habitat.

Now, I have volunteered extensively with the Friends of Willapa National Wildlife Refuge over the past several years, as well as directly with Refuge staff. I've done everything from trails maintenance and invasive plant removal, to volunteer coordination and website updates, and habitat restoration and tour guiding. I know many of the staff members of Willapa NWR and board members and fellow volunteers of the Friends of Willapa NWR not just as colleagues but as friends, and I see the spirit that motivates them to protect this place.

While yes, seasonal waterfowl and deer/elk hunting do happen on Refuge lands because that's still mandated by the people at the top of the National Wildlife Refuge System (which is, itself nested within US Fish and Wildlife, itself a branch of the Department of the Interior), a large part of what Refuge staff are doing these days is habitat restoration for ALL wildlife--and no, not just so people can shoot them. Willapa NWR, for example, is made of 11,000 acres covering a wide variety of habitat types including multiple types of conifer forest (to include some of the last old growth western red cedar forest in southwest Washington), beach and dune habitat, tidal wetlands and estuary, and rare coastal meadows and other grasslands. There are several endangered, threatened, and otherwise vulnerable species found on the Refuge, including but not limited to multiple species of Pacific salmon who spawn on or near the Refuge; the western snowy plover, streaked horned lark, and marbled murrelet; the Columbian white-tailed deer and Cascade torrent salamander; and even endangered plants like pink sand verbena.

Willapa NWR staff aren't just sitting back, rubbing their hands gleefully like cartoon villains while they imagine how many black-tailed deer or northern pintails are going to be taken by hunters this year. What they're concerned with is watching how the 500 acres of tidal estuary at the south end of Willapa Bay that had been cut off for a century by a dike system to create cattle pasture, and then restored by those same staff between 2012-8, is beginning to recover and become suitable habitat for native wildlife. They're also actively working on bulldozing acres and acres of non-native beach grass on Leadbetter Point to restore it to the original sandy dune habitat, planting native dune plants that were choked out by the non-native grasses, and hoping that this year's batch of snowy plover chicks born there is even bigger than last year's. They're monitoring meadow restorations that include plenty of early blue violets for the highly endangered Oregon silverspot butterfly, whose northernmost historical range is found here, in preparation for when the Oregon Zoo's recovery efforts bring that rare insect back here.

They're also organizing more native planting efforts around the Refuge, shorebird surveys to help keep a tally of what species are using the Refuge during migration (one of which I'm volunteering for this afternoon), and coming up with more ways to bring more visitors to Refuge lands to enjoy and appreciate the natural beauty there. And--I'm happy to say--they're working with me to get me the necessary permit so I can bring people there on my own guided nature tours, because we're working toward that same goal of showcasing this incredible, fragile, important set of ecosystems so that more people know about them, care about them, and want to protect them.

So yes, hunting is still allowed on certain portions of this and other Wildlife Refuges. Your everyday Refuge staff have no power over that reality, and I don't know that this would change given that the Duck Stamps are such a big part of Refuge funding, and the bulk of Duck Stamp purchasers are hunters, and it's not likely that the federal government is going to be amenable to suddenly pumping millions more dollars from other sources into Refuges (public lands in general are frequently underfunded at all levels.) What Refuge staff can do right now, though, is continue protecting these places with a more complete scientific view of ecology than their predecessors, restoring them to more natural habitats, and highlighting some of the most vulnerable species protected there at a time when habitat loss is THE single biggest cause of species endangerment and extinction.

Finally, I might add, you're going to find similar habitat protection and restoration activities happening at National Wildlife Refuges across the country. People often don't realize they're open to the public, when in fact many have visitor centers and developed trail systems and other visitor resources. I highly recommend finding your nearest National Wildlife Refuge and visiting them, and see just what natural wonders they're protecting.

To be honest, if one of the students in my Junior Duck Stamp classes ever turned in something like this, I would be elated.

(For a bit of background--a few years ago the Federal Duck Stamp contest rules were changed so that artists HAD to include some element of waterfowl hunting in their entries, whether they were comfortable with it or not. The above artwork may be my favorite example of malicious--or at least snarky--compliance.)