U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service logo A Unit of the National Wildlife Refuge System
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Santa Ana
National Wildlife Refuge

3325 Green Jay Road
Alamo, TX   78516
E-mail: christine_donald@fws.gov
Phone Number: 956-784-7500
Visit the Refuge's Web Site:
http://www.fws.gov/refuge/santa_ana/
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  Overview
Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge
Step into a rare tropical world at Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge. Spanish moss drips from trees. Noisy Chachalacas welcome the morning dawn. A malachite butterfly flits from the shadows. The wildlife clientele is truly international here along the most southern stretch of the Rio Grande.

Thanks to the foresight of those who succeeded in protecting the Refuge in 1943, we can experience a natural world that has vanished from 95 percent of the most southern tip of Texas. Santa Ana NWR gleams like an inviting island in a sea of cleared and altered lands.


Getting There . . .
Take Highway 83 to Alamo, turn south onto FM 907 for 7.5 miles. At Highway 281 (Old Military Highway) turn left and continue for about one quarter of a mile. The Refuge is on the south side of the highway.

Get Google map and directions to this refuge/WMD from a specified address:

Your full starting address AND town and state OR zip code


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These driving directions are provided as a general guide only. No representation is made or warranty given as to their content, road conditions or route usability or expeditiousness. User assumes all risk of use.

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Wildlife and Habitat

You're entering the 2,088-acre home of nearly 400 bird species, half of all butterfly species found in North America, and such rarities as the indigo snake and Altamira Oriole.

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History
Dreams and schemes gone awry forged the foundation for the present day Refuge. Once traded for a fiddle and a new suit, this former Mexican land grant harbors as many stories as wildlife. The same land narrowly escaped a plan to form the keystone in a river development project on the scale of the Hudson River Valley.

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    Recreation and Education Opportunities
Environmental Education
Photography
Wildlife Observation
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Management Activities
Before the era of dams, the Rio Grande regularly spilled over its banks. The waters carried fertile silt, cut shifting channels into the delta and created crescent-shaped oxbow lakes called “resacas.” These resacas assure life for the bottomland hardwood forest, provide nesting and feeding habitat for birds and watering holes for animals. Resacas are home to a medley of creeping, crawling, slithering, and scuttling creatures. Today, the Refuge mimics the natural flooding that once occurred, pumping water from the Rio Grande into wetlands and managing the wetlands for the benefit of wildlife.