Benefits to Fish, Wildlife and Plants

This proposal will provide habitat and promote management for a diversity of wildlife, including endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers, threatened Louisiana black bears, waterfowl, shorebirds, wading birds, marsh birds, woodcock, and forest interior songbirds. Annually these refuges attract hundreds of thousands of migratory waterfowl including mallards, teal, pintail, shovelers, gadwall and wood ducks.

Rafinesque’s big-eared and southeastern bats, both species of concern, use water tupelo-baldcypress brakes within bottomland forests.

These lands are also important to Neotropical migrants as well as nesting
warblers, Mississippi kites, cerulean warblers, and wood ducks.