Photo Credit: Aaron Rinker, USFWS

The National Wildlife Refuge System is

• the only system of federal lands dedicated specifically to wildlife conservation.
• the largest and most complete collection of habitats managed by any resource agency in the world.
• 540 units, including nearly 95 million acres.The National Wildlife Refuge System stretches from the caribou-tracked tundra of Alaska to the rain forests of Puerto Rico.
• the waterfowl nesting grounds in the prairie potholes of North Dakota to the teeming coastal marshes of Louisiana.
• the puffin colonies on the rocky coast of Maine to the turtle nesting beaches on Rose Atoll in the South Pacific.

Wildlife Comes First! Refuges provide essential habitat for hundreds of threatened and endangered species and many more thousands of species of migratory birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, invertebrates and plants

The Refuge System was born at a tiny three-acre island off the east coast of Florida in 1903. As the 20th Century dawned, the feathers of pelicans, egrets and other wading birds were in high demand to adorn women's hats, and "plume hunters" had ravaged the great rookeries of the southeast. On March 14, 1903 the great conservationist President Theodore Roosevelt set aside Pelican Island as a bird sanctuary - the first National Wildlife Refuge.

Last Updated: 3/24/09