Wildlife and Habitat Management
Taking a blood sample from a male painted bunting. Credit: Peter Range, USFWS
Refuge Objectives: -- These are the underlying management goals for the refuge.
- Maintain and protect the coastal maritime forest, marsh and beach communities.
- Provide habitat for migratory birds, wading and shorebirds, and native fauna.
- Provide habitat for endangered and threatened loggerhead sea turtles, wood storks, bald eagles, peregrine falcons and piping plovers.
- Provide recreation and environmental education for the public.
Management Tools: -- These are the tools refuge staff use to accomplish these goals.
- Prescribed fire and wildfire suppression
- Sea turtle nest monitoring - This is done on Wassaw Island through a partnership with the Savannah Science Museum and their "Caretta Research Project.
- Managed white-tailed deer hunts.
- Exotic species control
- Law enforcement
- Education/Interpretation
