National Wildlife Refuge System celebrates 100 years

NATURAL PERSPECTIVES

The National Wildlife Refuge System is 100 years old this year. On

March 14, 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt established tiny Pelican

Island off the East Coast of Florida as the nation’s first federal

preserve for the protection of birds.

A hundred years ago, market hunters slaughtered birds by the

millions for meat and plumes. Feathers and even entire birds were

used to decorate ladies’ hats. The five-acre Pelican Island reserve

was established to protect the herons, egrets, spoonbills and

pelicans that lived there from becoming unwilling participants in the

millinery trade.

The first refuge employee, Paul Kroeger, earned the paltry sum of

$1 a year from the federal government for his services. The Audubon

Society paid him a salary to serve as warden, but that salary was

only $7 a month. In those days, men served as wardens mainly for the

love of it. They became wardens because protecting wildlife was the

right thing to do, not because it was a good way to make a living.

Things haven’t changed a whole lot in the past 100 years in that

regard.

Those were dangerous years for game wardens. The days of Daniel

Boone, the buffalo hunters of the old West, and the lawlessness of

Dodge City weren’t very far in the past. Hunters were used to

shooting whatever they wanted with no regulation. The concept of

protecting wildlife was unfamiliar and market hunters were resentful.

A mere six months after the National Audubon Society was incorporated

in January 1905, the extent of hunter resentment manifested itself

when a poacher murdered Audubon game warden Guy Bradley. In 1908,

poachers murdered two more wardens, one in Florida and one in South

Carolina. Their deaths, plus the death of the last passenger pigeon

in 1914, helped turn public opinion about protecting wildlife and

habitats.

The preservation of Pelican Island was the first of a string of

great successes for wildlife conservation. During his term in office,

Roosevelt established 51 refuges to protect birds and four to protect

big game. Eventually the system grew to its current size of 540

refuges that cover 95-million acres.

It wasn’t until the presidency of Richard Nixon that Orange County

got a National Wildlife Refuge. The 920-acre Seal Beach National

Wildlife Refuge was established in 1972. This refuge is located

entirely within the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station and is managed

jointly by the Department of Navy and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife

Service. Recognizing the unique value to wildlife of the salt marsh

surrounding its navigable port, the Navy had designated the area as a

Navy Preserve in 1969. The refuge is managed primarily to provide

habitat for endangered California Least Terns and Light-footed

Clapper Rails, although the sensitive species Belding’s Savannah

Sparrows, California Brown Pelicans and Peregrine Falcons also use

the site.

The Seal Beach refuge was closed to the public for most of its

existence. Then, in the 1990s, the refuge was open to the public one

day a month, with opening of a visitor center in 1996. Due to

heightened security after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001,

however, public access has been heavily curtailed. While this is a

sad situation for those of us who enjoy watching wildlife, it’s

probably a benefit to the birds.

In 1903 when the nation’s wildlife refuge system was being

established on the East Coast, Anaheim Bay in Seal Beach encompassed

an estimated 2,300 acres. Bolsa and Sunset Bays encompassed 2,300

acres, as well. There were no Audubon Society members here to protect

the wildlife or to save their habitat. Bit by bit, our local coastal

wetlands were drained, farmed, and built upon. It was only the

presence of the Navy base in Seal Beach and the discovery of oil at

the Bolsa Chica that kept these areas from being totally drained and

developed.

Today, the protected wildlife area of the Bolsa Chica covers about

1,300 acres. About 300 acres are in the Bolsa Chica Ecological

Reserve, and are managed by the California Department of Fish and

Game. The remaining portion of that acreage is in a degraded state

and is awaiting restoration by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It

would be wonderful if the Bolsa Chica could one day join the National

Wildlife Refuge System.

We hope that 100 years from now, the billions of people who will

inhabit planet Earth will still have a few open places and some

wildlife left to enjoy. And we hope that future local residents will

recognize the years of hard work and sacrifice made by their

predecessors to protect and restore our local wild places.

* VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and

environmentalists. They can be reached at [email protected].