The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service oversees a multitude of National Wildlife Refuges, some tiny, others stretching over thousands of square miles of ocean.
National Wildlife Refuge Planning
The 1997 National Wildlife Refuge Improvement Act requires that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service develop a "Comprehensive Conservation Plan" (CCP) for each of the nation's more than 530 Refuges within 15 years. The National Wildlife Refuges in Hawai'i are not scheduled to begin that process until 2005.
The planning process includes an opportunity for you to make your concerns heard through written comments and public planning meetings. Because the plans will determine how the Fish and Wildlife Service manages your Refuges for 15 years, taking a little time to participate in the planning process could be the single most important thing you can do to protect these marvelous, varied places.
Although each Refuge faces unique challenges that must be address in its CCP, The Wilderness Society has identified a handful of issues that every Refuge plan should address.
- Wilderness
- Land Acquisition
- Compatibility
- Priorities
Wilderness
Because of the permanent protection it provides for the most pristine habitats within Wildlife Refuges, federal Wilderness designation is a critically important issue in CCP planning.
The National Wildlife Refuge System last inventoried its lands to identify wilderness-quality lands in the 1970s (1980s for Alaskan refuges). But hundreds of new Refuges have been established since then, and uncounted thousands of acres of their most pristine places have never been catalogued.
Few Refuges have monitored their wilderness quality lands or tried to identify additional candidates for wilderness protection since the original inventory. In addition, many places that should have been identified as wilderness were passed over in the original surveys. At the time, some refuge managers did not appreciate the value of wilderness and had goals to intensively develop even the most pristine lands under their administration. Ironically, lack of funding stymied many of these plans and some of the Refuge system's wildest places were left undisturbed. For example, according to refuge managers, a remarkable untouched bog in Vermont's Nissisquoi National Wildlife Refuge was never listed as potential wilderness because the former manager intended to construct dikes and levees to build a pond for ducks.
Land Acquisition
As they develop their Comprehensive Conservation Plans, Refuge managers should be identifying new lands to add to the refuge itself to meet the refuge's purposes. In many cases, adding acreage to serve as buffers around the refuge will help protect the refuge from encroaching development in the future. In others, the priority should be acquiring additional habitat needed by the region's wildlife populations. Refuge managers should be looking for opportunities, too, where promising habitat might become available in the future. The refuge should have a plan for identifying and acquiring that land before it is developed and lost forever.
Compatibility
Although the primary purpose of every wildlife refuge is to provide habitat for fish and wildlife, Refuges also provide exceptional opportunities for wildlife watching, hiking, fishing, hunting, educational programs and scientific research.
These activities are appropriate on refuges where they are compatible with the areas' wildlife conservation purpose. Unfortunately, some inappropriate and harmful commercial and recreational activities have been allowed on certain refuges over the years.
For example, four-wheelers, snowmobiles and other off-road vehicles disrupt wildlife and can devastate habitat. Commercial farming on leased refuge lands can use scarce water and introduce pesticides and other toxins. As part of the planning process, every refuge should establish a timeline to identify and phase out all activities that are incompatible with wildlife conservation.
Management Priorities
Wherever possible, our goal for refuge management is the restoration and maintenance of all native species and the natural habitats and processes upon which they depend. Refuges should help restore and maintain the biological integrity of the ecosystems in which they occur. Comprehensive conservation plans, now required for each refuge by the 1997 Act, should foster such management.
Today, refuge managers need to incorporate new knowledge about ecosystems and the importance of biodiversity into their long-range plans to ensure that the whole natural system and its processes are protected. This may include restoration of altered habitat, eliminating non-native plants and other invasive species, re-introduction of wild-fire and other natural processes or simply broadening the priorities of the refuge to explicitly include protection of whole ecosystems, not just a few selected species.
Intensive manipulation of habitat to benefit a single species or small group of species at the expense of native habitats should be avoided except where absolutely necessary to sustain imperiled species.
How can you get involved?
Find out when the refuges near you will be writing their plans. Chances are, they have already started the process; if they haven't, find out why and urge them to get moving!
