Wildflower Tours Announced for Hanford Reach National Monument

This spring the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will host four Wildflower Tours on the Hanford Reach National Monument’s Rattlesnake Unit. The three-hour guided bus tours will travel the base of Rattlesnake Mountain learning about shrub-steppe wildflowers and, weather permitting, will explore the plants at the top of Rattlesnake Mountain.  Seating is limited to 20 registrants per tour and will be filled through an online, first-come, first-served registration.
 
The tours are scheduled for the mornings and afternoons of May 1 and May 4.  Registration will open at 8:00 a.m. on April 10.  The web site for registration is www.hanfordtours.net, and additional information can be found there.
 
“We’ve been planning this for quite some time,” said Charlie Stenvall, Project Leader of the Mid-Columbia River National Wildlife Refuge Complex, which includes the Monument. “We’re excited to finally get the public into this special area, a promise we made to the community a long time ago.”
 
The Hanford Reach National Monument was established in 2000 to conserve and protect sensitive and increasingly rare archeological, biological and cultural treasures.  The Rattlesnake Unit of the Monument is normally closed to the public to protect exemplary examples of these resources. The Monument itself belongs to a nationwide network of federal lands—the National Wildlife Refuge System—dedicated to the protection of wildlife and their habitats.