by REP Policy Director Jim DiPeso published March 31, 2003 in the Albuquerque Tribune
America's national wildlife refuge system is celebrating its 100th anniversary this month.
Congress was poised to mark the occasion by opening the nation's largest national wildlife refuge, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, to the noise, pollution and disturbance of oil drilling.
Thanks to eight Republican senators, who defied their party and the White House last week, the refuge is safe for the moment.
But the special interest politicians in Congress, who still threaten it, are not the only assault that the national wildlife refuges face. Competition for water, invasive species, pollution, and population sprawl are other pressures on the sanctuaries that birds, bears, bison, and countless other creatures call home.
National wildlife refuges are a great American conservation achievement.
Founded by Theodore Roosevelt, the refuge system has grown to nearly 540 units and thousands of waterfowl production areas covering 95 million acres.
The refuges support more than 700 species of birds, 220 types of mammals, and 200 varieties of fish. Millions of migratory waterfowl stop at refuges to rest and feed. Nearly 35 million people visit refuges every year to enjoy the spectacle.
National wildlife refuges are found in all 50 states and several U.S. territories. Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge south of Albuquerque, for example, is a haven for pronghorn, desert bighorn sheep, mountain lions, bald eagles, peregrine falcons and many other species.
Much of the stunning variety of American geography is represented in the refuges - Arctic tundra, Sonoran desert, mountain valleys, old-growth forests, prairie wetlands, coastal marshes, sagebrush grasslands, cypress swamps, mangrove estuaries, and tropical atolls.
National wildlife refuges often don't receive the attention given national parks or forests. As their second century begins, however, the profile of national wildlife refuges is rising in ways that signify bad tidings for America's natural heritage.
Proposed oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is the most spectacular and politically charged threat. The Arctic refuge's 1.5 million-acre coastal plain is a biological treasure trove of caribou, bears, wolves, moose, foxes, musk oxen, and migratory birds from the lower 48 states.
The Arctic refuge is a silent, spectacular landscape, one of the few places in America where the untrammeled wilderness of the nation's youth can be experienced on a grand scale.
The impacts of oil production, no matter how carefully carried out, would be profound and lasting, as signaled in a recent National Academy of Sciences study critical of oil production at nearby Prudhoe Bay that documented the effects.
Nearly 3,000 miles to the south a different sort of crisis is brewing. The Klamath River Basin's water supplies are maxed out and nearby wildlife refuges are paying the ecological tab.
The Klamath basin's wetlands and shallow lakes once covered more than 300,000 acres. Today, 80 percent of the wetlands are gone, drained and filled for irrigated farms in the desert. Bird populations are way down.
Coho salmon are on the endangered species list.
In an overdrawn basin, there is not enough water to satisfy all the demand for irrigation, keep the remaining marshes wet, and provide enough clean water for tribal and commercial fisheries downstream.
Unfortunately, the water conflicts afflicting the Klamath refuges are not unique. An estimated one-third of refuges nationwide face water shortages.
Across the nation, invasive species threaten native ecosystems on 8 million acres of refuges. At Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge in Florida, Old World climbing fern and Brazilian pepper render land unusable by native wildlife.
Nutria, an aggressive Central American rodent, is wiping out marsh plants in Maryland's Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. Purple loosestrife, leafy spurge, buckthorn and spotted knapweed are invaders found throughout Midwestern refuges.
Every year, pollution kills thousands of birds at the Lower Rio Grande Valley refuge in Texas and the Sonny Bono Salton Sea refuge in California.
Everywhere, refuges are short of funds. While President George W. Bush's proposed $25.5 million budget increase for refuges is welcome, the boost would make only a small dent in a maintenance backlog exceeding $1 billion.
Like national parks, forests, and monuments, national wildlife refuges are priceless national heirlooms.
We owe it to future generations to take better care of them. Greater conservation efforts are needed so that the refuges' bicentennial, a century from now, is worth celebrating.
