National Wildlife Refuge System
IUCN category IV (habitat/species management area)
Official logo
Location	United States
Area	95,972,133 acres (388,385 km2)
Established	1903
Visitors	41,255,144 (in 2008)
Governing body	U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

National Wildlife Refuge is a designation for certain protected areas of the United States managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. The National Wildlife Refuge System is the world's premiere system of public lands and waters set aside to conserve America's fish, wildlife and plants. Since President Theodore Roosevelt designated Florida's Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge as the first wildlife refuge in 1903, the System has grown to more than 150 million acres (610,000 km²), 555 national wildlife refuges and other units of the Refuge System, plus 37 wetland management districts.

The mission of the Refuge System is to manage a national network of lands and waters for the conservation, management, and where appropriate, restoration of fish, wildlife and plant resources and their habitat. The Refuge System maintains the biological integrity, diversity and environmental health of these natural resources for the benefit of present and future generations of Americans.

National Wildlife Refuges manage a full range of habitat types, including wetlands; prairies; coastal and marine areas; and temperate, tundra and boreal forests. The management of each habitat is a complex web of controlling or eradicating invasive species, using fire in a prescribed manner, assuring adequate water resources, and assessing external threats like development or contamination.

Among these hundreds of national refuges are home to some 700 species of birds, 220 species of mammals, 250 reptile and amphibian species and more than 200 species of fish. Endangered species are a priority of National Wildlife Refuges in that early sixty refuges have been established with the primary purpose of conserving 280 threatened or endangered species.

National Wildlife Refuges are also places for outdoor recreation. The Refuge System manages six wildlife-dependent recreational uses in accordance with the National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act, including hunting, fishing, birding, photography, environmental education, and interpretation. Hunters visit more than 350 hunting programs on refuges and on about 36,000 Waterfowl Production Areas. Opportunities for fresh or saltwater fishing are available at more than 340 refuges. There is at least one wildlife refuge in each of the fifty states.

The National Wildlife Refuge System faces a number of challenges and ongoing issues, including urban intrusion/development, habitat fragmentation, degradation of water quantity and quality, climate change, invasive species, increasing demands for recreation, and increasing demands for energy development. However, the system has had numerous successes, including providing a habitat for endangered species, migratory birds, plants and numerous other valuable animals; implementation of the NWRS Improvement Act, acquisition and protection of key critical inholdings, and establishing leadership in habitat restoration and management.

An important success for the refuge system has been the creation of Comprehensive Conservation Plans (CCPs)for each refuge, which must be completed by the end of 2012, with a subsequent review process to follow. CCPs must be consistent with the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) goals for conservation and wildlife management.^[1][2]

The CCPs outline conservation goals for each refuge for fifteen years into the future, with the intent that they will be revised every fifteen years thereafter. The comprehensive conservation planning process requires several phases, including: a scoping phase, in which each refuge holds public meetings to identify the public’s main concerns; plan formulation, when refuge staff and FWS planners identify the key issues and refuge goals; writing the draft plan, in which wildlife and habitat alternatives are developed, and the plan is submitted for public review; revision of the draft plan, which takes into consideration the public’s input; and plan implementation.^[3][4]

A major requirement of each CCP is that it adheres to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Each plan must therefore propose several potential alternatives to habitat and wildlife management on the refuge and identify their possible impacts on the refuge. Additionally, NEPA requires FWS planners and refuge staff to engage the public in this planning process to assist them with identifying the most appropriate alternative.^[5]

Comprehensive Conservation Plans are important documents for guiding wildlife and habitat management on national wildlife refuges. The completed CCPs are available to the public and can be found on the FWS website.^[6][7]

History[link]

Statistics (as of 2008)[link]

Pelican Island was the nation's first wildlife refuge

Physical features[link]

• Area of land under management = 95,972,133 acres (388,385 km²)^[8]
• Area of wetlands = 23,952,089 acres (96,931 km²)^[8]
• Number of management units = 586 refuges^[8]
• Number of Wilderness areas = 75^[8]
• Area of Wilderness = 20,699,257 acres (83,767 km²)^[8]
• Length of rivers within the National Wild & Scenic Rivers System = 1,086 miles (1,748 km)^[8]
• Length of refuge boundary with Mexico = 120 miles (190 km)^[8]

Management[link]

• Area of wetlands restored in 2008 = 28,186 acres (114 km²)^[8]
• Area burned in 2008 to reduce hazardous fuels = 436,422 acres (1,766 km²) (WUI 116,134 acres (470 km²) ; non-WUI 234,638 acres (950 km²); other 85,650 acres (347 km²))^[8]

Visitation[link]

• Total visitors in 2008 = 41,255,144^[8]
• Total visits in 2008 = 75,237,594^[8]

Volunteers[link]

• Total volunteers in 2008 = 35,833^[8]
• Total volunteer hours in 2008 = 1,389,886^[8]
• Value of volunteer hours in 2008 = $27,116,675.86 (based on Independent Sector's current dollar value of $19.51)^[8]

Personnel[link]

• Total staff = (2004 total, awaiting 2008 figures) 3,809 FTE’s (full-time equivalents, thus two half-time employees count as one FTE)^[8]
• Number of refuge enforcement officers = 402 (includes 259 full time and 143 dual function employees) (source: Washington Office)
• Number of firefighter = 538 FTE's (accounts for 800 firefighters—3000 additional non-fire-funded personnel with fire qualifications)(source: NIFC)

Special Management Areas[link]

In addition to refuge status, the "special" status of lands within individual refuges may be recognized by additional designations, either legislatively or administratively. Special designation may also occur through the actions of other legitimate agencies or organizations. The influence that special designations may have on the management of refuge lands and waters may vary considerably.

There is a wide variety of special land designations that currently overlay national wildlife refuges that total 175 refuges. Authority for designation of some special management area types (e.g., Research Natural Areas) on refuges lies solely with the Service. For most special management area types, responsibility is held by or shared with others.

Among the other varied special management area types found on refuges are Cultural Resource Sites, Historic Sites, Research Natural Areas, Wilderness, Wild and Scenic Rivers, National Natural Landmarks and National Trails. Some overlay designations may place refuges within international networks of protected lands, such as Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserves and Wetlands of International Importance (Ramsar Convention).

Refuges may also be included within much larger special management areas designated by other agencies or organizations, such as Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserves, National Marine Sanctuaries, Estuarine Sanctuaries and Biosphere Reserves. Management policy and procedural guidance for Service special management areas is currently found in the Refuge Manual. Revised guidance is in preparation for incorporation into the new Service Manual. Special management area training for administrators and refuge managers currently includes multi-agency sponsored and university correspondence courses.

See also[link]

• List of National Wildlife Refuges
• List of National Wildlife Refuges established for endangered species
• List of largest National Wildlife Refuges
• Timeline of environmental events
• Pacific Island Wildlife Refuges
• Congressional Wildlife Refuge Caucus
• United States Fish and Wildlife Service
• National Wildlife Refuge Association
• State wildlife trails (United States)

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Fischman, Robert (Fall 2005). "The Significance of National Wildlife Refuges in the Development of U.S. Conservation Policy". Journal of Land Use and Environmental Law 21:1–?. Indiana Legal Studies Research Paper No. 19. doi:10.2139/ssrn.699482.
• Schroeder, R. (2008). "Comprehensive conservation planning and ecological sustainability within the United States National Wildlife Refuge System". Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy 4(1):38–44.

External links[link]

• Official website of the National Wildlife Refuge System
• Legislation
• Official Web site of the Blue Goose Alliance—a non-profit organization promoting the establishment of the National Wildlife Refuge Service as a separate agency within the U.S. Department of the Interior
• National Wildlife Refuge Association—A nonprofit entity supporting the National Wildlife Refuge System
• RefugeWatch—A blog that follows news and events from the National Wildlife Refuge System
• The National Wildlife Refuge Association
• NWRS - Refuge Planning
• The Cooperative Alliance for Refuge Enhancement (CARE)
• The short film National Wildlife Refuge System (2005) is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]
• The short film Teddy Roosevelt - National Wildlife Refuge System (2005) is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2010)

A wildlife refuge, also called a wildlife sanctuary, may be a naturally occurring sanctuary, such as an island, that provides protection for species from hunting, predation or competition, or it may refer to a protected area, a geographic territory within which wildlife is protected.^{[citation needed]} Such wildlife refuges are generally officially designated territories, created by government legislation, though the land itself may be publicly or privately owned. Also, the Chernobyl nuclear accident site has accidentally become a wildlife refuge.^{[citation needed]} It preserves the animals that are endangered or about to be extinct.

History[link]

In the 3rd century BC, King Devanampiya Tissa declared the area around Mihintale, Sri Lanka as a sanctuary for wildlife,^[1] probably the first of its kind in the ancient world. According to stone inscriptions found in the vicinity, the king commanded the people not to harm animals or destroy trees within the area.^{[citation needed]}

The first American wildlife refuge, Lake Merritt Wildlife Refuge at Lake Merritt, was established by Samuel Merritt and enacted in California state law in 1870 as the first government owned refuge.^[2] The first federally owned refuge in America is Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge and was established by Theodore Roosevelt in 1903 as part of his Square Deal campaign to improve America.^{[citation needed]}. At the time, setting aside land for wildlife was not a constitutional right of the president. More recently, a bi-partisan group of US House of Representatives members established the Congressional Wildlife Refuge Caucus to further the needs of the National Wildlife Refuge System in the US Congress.^{[citation needed]}

Today there are several national and international organizations that have taken the responsibility of supervising numerous systems of non-profit sanctuaries and refuges in order to provide a general system for sanctuaries to follow.^{[citation needed]} Among them, the American Sanctuary Association monitors and aids in various facilities to care for exotic wildlife. Their accredited facilities follow high standards and a rigid application processes to ensure that the animals under their care are avidly cared for and maintained.

See also[link]

• Animal sanctuary
• Conservation area
• Crown Game Preserve — designation of wildlife refuges in Ontario, Canada
• Elephant sanctuary
• Fossil Park
• National Park
• National Wildlife Refuge Association
• National Wildlife Refuge System
• Nature reserve
• Protected area
• Zoo

References[link]

External links[link]

• IUCN protected area categories

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A Royal Bengal Tiger, the largest big cat in Bannerghatta National Park, India

A Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) surfs the wave of a research boat on the Banana River, near the Kennedy Space Center – an example of wildlife.

Wildlife includes all non-domesticated plants, animals and other organisms. Domesticating wild plant and animal species for human benefit has occurred many times all over the planet, and has a major impact on the environment, both positive and negative.

Wildlife can be found in all ecosystems. Deserts, forests, rain forests, plains, grasslands, and other areas including the most developed urban sites, all have distinct forms of wildlife. While the term in popular culture usually refers to animals that are untouched by human factors, most scientists agree that wildlife around the world is impacted by human activities.

Humans have historically tended to separate civilization from wildlife in a number of ways including the legal, social, and moral sense. This has been a reason for debate throughout recorded history. Religions have often declared certain animals to be sacred, and in modern times concern for the natural environment has provoked activists to protest the exploitation of wildlife for human benefit or entertainment. Literature has also made use of the traditional human separation from wildlife.

Food, pets, traditional medicines[link]

Anthropologists believe that the Stone Age peoples and hunter-gatherers relied on wildlife, both plants and animals, for their food. In fact, some species may have been hunted to extinction by early human hunters. Today, hunting, fishing, or gathering wildlife is still a significant food source in some parts of the world. In other areas, hunting and non-commercial fishing are mainly seen as a sport or recreation, with the edible meat as mostly a side benefit.^{[citation needed]} Meat sourced from wildlife that is not traditionally regarded as game is known as bush meat. The increasing demand for wildlife as a source of traditional food in East Asia is decimating populations of sharks, primates, pangolins and other animals, which they believe have aphrodisiac properties.

In November 2008, almost 900 plucked and "oven-ready" owls and other protected wildlife species were confiscated by the Department of Wildlife and National Parks in Malaysia, according to TRAFFIC. The animals were believed to be bound for China, to be sold in wild meat restaurants. Most are listed in CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) which prohibits or restricts such trade.

A November 2008 report from biologist and author Sally Kneidel, PhD, documented numerous wildlife species for sale in informal markets along the Amazon River, including wild-caught marmosets sold for as little as $1.60 (5 Peruvian soles).^[2] Many Amazon species, including peccaries, agoutis, turtles, turtle eggs, anacondas, armadillos, etc., are sold primarily as food. Others in these informal markets, such as monkeys and parrots, are destined for the pet trade, often smuggled into the United States. Still other Amazon species are popular ingredients in traditional medicines sold in local markets. The medicinal value of animal parts is based largely on superstition.

Religion[link]

Many wildlife species have spiritual significance in different cultures around the world, and they and their products may be used as sacred objects in religious rituals. For example, eagles, hawks and their feathers have great cultural and spiritual value to Native Americans as religious objects.

Media[link]

The Douglas Squirrel (Tamiasciurus douglasii) is an example of wildlife.

Wildlife has long been a common subject for educational television shows. National Geographic specials appeared on CBS beginning in 1965, later moving to ABC and then PBS. In 1963, NBC debuted Wild Kingdom, a popular program featuring zoologist Marlin Perkins as host. The BBC natural history unit in the UK was a similar pioneer, the first wildlife series LOOK presented by Sir Peter Scott, was a studio-based show, with filmed inserts. It was in this series that David Attenborough first made his appearance which led to the series Zoo Quest during which he and cameraman Charles Lagus went to many exotic places looking for elusive wildlife—notably the Komodo dragon in Indonesia and lemurs in Madagascar. Since 1984, the Discovery Channel and its spin off Animal Planet in the US have dominated the market for shows about wildlife on cable television, while on PBS the NATURE strand made by WNET-13 in New York and NOVA by WGBH in Boston are notable. See also Nature documentary. Wildlife television is now a multi-million dollar industry with specialist documentary film-makers in many countries including UK, US, New Zealand NHNZ, Australia, Austria, Germany, Japan, and Canada. There are many magazines which cover wildlife including National Wildlife Magazine, Birds & Blooms, Birding (magazine), and Ranger Rick (for children).

Tourism[link]

Fuelled by media coverage and inclusion of conservation education in early school curriculum, Wildlife tourism & Ecotourism has fast become a popular industry generating substantial income for developing nations with rich wildlife specially, Africa and India. This ever growing and ever becoming more popular form of tourism is providing the much needed incentive for poor nations to conserve their rich wildlife heritage and its habitat.

Destruction[link]

Map of early human migrations, according to mitochondrial population genetics. Numbers are millennia before the present.

This subsection focuses on anthropogenic forms of wildlife destruction.

Exploitation of wild populations has been a characteristic of modern man since our exodus from Africa 130,000 – 70,000 years ago. The rate of extinctions of entire species of plants and animals across the planet has been so high in the last few hundred years it is widely considered that we are in the sixth great extinction event on this planet; the Holocene Mass Extinction.

Destruction of wildlife does not always lead to an extinction of the species in question, however, the dramatic loss of entire species across Earth dominates any review of wildlife destruction as extinction is the level of damage to a wild population from which there is no return.

The four most general reasons that lead to destruction of wildlife include overkill, habitat destruction and fragmentation, impact of introduced species and chains of extinction.^[3]

Overkill[link]

Overkill happens whenever hunting occurs at rates greater than the reproductive capacity of the population is being exploited. The effects of this are often noticed much more dramatically in slow growing populations such as many larger species of fish. Initially when a portion of a wild population is hunted, an increased availability of resources (food, etc.) is experienced increasing growth and reproduction as Density dependent inhibition is lowered. Hunting, fishing and so on, has lowered the competition between members of a population. However, if this hunting continues at rate greater than the rate at which new members of the population can reach breeding age and produce more young, the population will begin to decrease in numbers.

Populations are confined to islands, whether literal islands or just areas of habitat that are effectively an “island” for the species concerned have also been observed to be at greater risk of dramatic population declines following unsustainable hunting.

Habitat destruction and fragmentation[link]

Deforestation and increased road-building in the Amazon Rainforest are a significant concern because of increased human encroachment upon wild areas, increased resource extraction and further threats to biodiversity.

The habitat of any given species is considered its preferred area or territory. Many processes associated human habitation of an area cause loss of this area and decrease the carrying capacity of the land for that species. In many cases these changes in land use cause a patchy break-up of the wild landscape. Agricultural land frequently displays this type of extremely fragmented, or relictual, habitat. Farms sprawl across the landscape with patches of uncleared woodland or forest dotted in-between occasional paddocks.

Examples of habitat destruction include grazing of bushland by farmed animals, changes to natural fire regimes, forest clearing for timber production and wetland draining for city expansion.

Impact of introduced species[link]

Mice, cats, rabbits, dandelions and poison ivy are all examples of species that have become invasive threats to wild species in various parts of the world^{[citation needed]}. Frequently species that are uncommon in their home range become out-of-control invasions in distant but similar climates. The reasons for this have not always been clear and Charles Darwin felt it was unlikely that exotic species would ever be able to grow abundantly in a place in which they had not evolved. The reality is that the vast majority of species exposed to a new habitat do not reproduce successfully. Occasionally, however, some populations do take hold and after a period of acclimation can increase in numbers significantly, having destructive effects on many elements of the native environment of which they have become part.

Chains of extinction[link]

This final group is one of secondary effects. All wild populations of living things have many complex intertwining links with other living things around them. Large herbivorous animals such as the hippopotamus have populations of insectivorous birds that feed off the many parasitic insects that grow on the hippo. Should the hippo die out, so too will these groups of birds, leading to further destruction as other species dependent on the birds are affected. Also referred to as a Domino effect, this series of chain reactions is by far the most destructive process that can occur in any ecological community.

Another example is the black drongos and the cattle egrets found in India. These birds feed on insects on the back of cattle, which helps to keep them disease-free. If we destroy the nesting habitats of these birds, it will result a decrease in the cattle population because of the spread of insect-borne diseases.

See also[link]

	Environment portal
	Ecology portal
	Earth sciences portal
	Biology portal
	Sustainable development portal

References[link]

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2007)

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Wildlife

• Wildlife at the Open Directory Project