Resource Management
Refuge History - Habitat Types - Habitat Management - Waterfowl Surveys - Monitoring/Research - Endangered Species

Create it and Wildlife Will Come!
Wetlands on the Complex's six Refuges are almost entirely manmade. In 1937 with the establishment of Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge (NWR), managers and biologists worked to transform the Refuge's dry, alkaline lands into productive marshes. The Civilian Conservation Corps, using bulldozers and tractors, began creating marshes and ponds.

Additional Refuges were created in the 1950s through the 1980s, forming the Sacramento NWR Complex. Five Refuges were created to provide wintering habitat for waterfowl and reduce crop damage. These Refuges--Sacramento, Delevan, Colusa, Sutter, and Butte Sink--consist of wetlands, grasslands, and riparian habitat. The sixth, Sacramento River NWR, was established in 1989 to protect and restore the River's riparian habitat along portions of the Sacramento River from Red Bluff to Princeton.