On the National Wildlife Refuge System
- birdingunfettered2
- Jan 12, 2021
- 5 min read
Updated: Feb 4, 2021
~By Sumalee~
As of this writing, V. and I have been to fourteen National Wildlife Refuges, most of them in Oregon, a handful in Washington or California. There are the big three—ones we visit and revisit with each change in weather or just on a lark because they are so close to home: Baskett Slough, Ankeny, and William L. Finley. Others we have visited more than once; some we promise ourselves a return encounter.
Until we began birding, neither of us had ever heard of the National Wildlife Refuge System. Purely by experience on foot, we discovered that these refuges often comprise large areas (often hundreds of acres) of primarily seasonal wetlands and adjunct deciduous woods and meadows. Typically, the refuges have irregular borders because private farmlands crosscut through them, which is one reason why many refuges are organized into “units”. Some very large refuges encompass an ecologically- and geographically-linked system or “complex,” for instance, the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge Complex, comprised of six refuges straddling southern Oregon and northern California. All national refuges are managed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Because migratory birds expend so much energy on mere daily survival, the NWR system prohibits dogs, runners/joggers, and bicycles. None of these rules are enforced, and people who spurn the rules and use the refuges as their personal running trail or dog walk do not realize for that one or two occasions of unnecessary flushing from the activity of a runner or lunge of a dog can jeopardize the bird’s chances of survival, so precarious are the bird’s energy stores and its life in the present context of severely diminished habitats and food resources as well as the devastating impact of the extreme climate shift.
Unhappily, we also discovered that the designation “refuge” is an oxymoron, or more accurately, a contradiction, since the USFWS manages and promotes certain parts of a given refuge for hunting the very fowl and “game”—to wit, deer, elk, mountain goats and sheep, bear, cougar, and other living beings—that take the concept of “refuge” prima facie.
This contradiction directly reflects the ethos of Theodore Roosevelt, who as President founded the National Wildlife Refuge system in 1903 and believed that refuges were necessary to ensure a future of perpetual hunting in appropriate environments: “In a civilized and cultivated country, wild animals only continue to exist at all when preserved by sportsmen . . . the most important factor in keeping the larger and more valuable wild creatures from total extermination” (NWR site).
This is not the place to enter into debate with this baseless, illogically-constructed view, so I will leave it to talk about the admirable achievements of NWR agents and scientists. Clearly, the system protects more than 150 million acres from private or public development. But beyond this passive statutory guarantee, the NWR staff have marvelously restored hundreds of wetlands and undertaken the restoration of hundreds more: time-consuming and painstaking projects requiring equally the knowledge and data of various biological sciences and their representative experts and years of ground-level labor, ongoing management and maintenance, and adaptation to the changing climate. These projects supplement and coincide with habitat restoration and protections, such as the marine habitats that form the lifeline, literally a life-flight, along the Pacific Flyway.
The National Wildlife Refuges are wetlands, grasslands, and shorelines we’ve come to know and love through exploration while looking to spot birds. As V put it, where before she aimed exclusively to hike hard and fast, the terrain crossed primarily in service of raising the heart rate, she has come to appreciate the slow, meandering, nearly aimless fits and starts of a birding foray, the countryside counterpart of Baudelaire’s promenades. We certainly do enjoy the variety of refuge topography and geography, although our favorite refuges are those that feature marshes with bordering meadows and grassy knolls as well as small woods. This makes for great walks and birding, for you can start alongside a marsh spotting waterfowl and small marsh-loving passerines, like marsh wrens, red-winged blackbirds, and lesser finches, continue on to a meadow that will have the hawks, harriers, and kestrels circling above and meadowlarks, sparrows, and the shy-acting but fierce-looking horned larks below; and then wind your way up typically gentle slopes to mixed woods with woodpeckers, creepers, ruby-crowned and golden-crowned kinglets and bushtits, the bushtits flashing about in what we call a “bushtit tornado.”
Some of the refuges feature seasonal marshes neatly divided into square or rectangular tracts, and in season, canals, and impromptu waterways provide the only means of navigating the territory. Sometimes, dikes provide paths for walkways, but this type of refuge largely caters to hunters, and birders and wildlife viewers will find them more challenging, if not unsettling, to roam. Indeed, the only sanctified, true refuges are the marine, sea-bound ones, such as the San Juan Island refuge, which consist of hundreds of tiny rock islands and outcroppings that provide nesting habitats for many pelagic species and enjoy a human-free, 200-yard offshore buffer zone.
More dramatic than a seasonal marsh is the tidal marsh refuge, in which visitors witness a metamorphosing landscape—and attendant birdscape—according to tide. These refuges are all marsh: flat expanses of water, mud, or somewhere in between. Thankfully, birders may navigate these terrains by boardwalks whose construction generous foundations and community philanthropy make possible. Tidal marshes bring to the fore how slight changes in the topography entail dramatic changes in bird populations: now there are hundreds of shorebirds, and then there are none.
Most refuges set aside large portions of the refuge from October 1 through March 31
of each year as human-free sanctuaries for birds migrating south for the winter. Of course, this is precisely the time bird lovers yearn to spot, identify, and count the thousands of birds returning to stay for the season or passing through on their way to South America. This predicament ensures that Nikon and Leica will maintain their brisk business in expensive binoculars and scopes that enable birders to spy from afar on the pintails, teals, geese, and dozens more busily feeding or grooming on the marshes deep in the areas protected from human intrusion.
Some refuges make allowances for the fact that many birds perceive automobiles similarly to blinds, paying little attention to the bipeds ensconced within nor the oversized zoom lenses perched on the rolled-down window aimed directly at them. Hence, birders experience these refuges as “auto tours,” driving from one marsh or field to another. Certain refuges can only be experienced by driving, like the high desert terrain of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge accessible primarily through a 42-mile long auto tour.
Whatever the case may be, none of these refuges have disappointed us. Admittedly, there are always those days when few birds deign to make their appearances and we return home with a sparse list indeed. We’ve come to understand that such shortfalls occur by nature—the season has shifted, and the hordes of kinglets have flown the coop and disappeared. Or the weather has played dice with accommodations, whether ours or the birds. Or the time of day we appeared was perhaps an hour too early or too late. After all, this is what makes birding an adventure of wild life, which knows nothing of the confinement of zoos, and the rarity of one day only entices us toward the possibilities of the next birding occasion.
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