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America's National Wildlife Refuges in Trouble

Posted on: Sunday, 25 May 2008, 12:00 CDT

Larry Wargowsky, who manages the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in central Wisconsin, has become accustomed to working the front desk at the refuge office and scrounging up volunteers to grade roads and serve as interpretive guides.

He 's not alone. Staffers at Wisconsin 's seven national wildlife refuges are equally hard-pressed to keep the important public lands open and available to growing numbers of visitors, now estimated to be 1.5 million a year. The problem is a budget crisis that has left Wisconsin 's seven national refuges $31.8 million short of what they need to operate, according to a report released last week.

Federal budget cuts threaten a 25 percent reduction in staffing levels at the refuges in the state, says the report from the Cooperative Alliance for Refuge Enhancement, or CARE, a coalition of groups working in support of the national wildlife refuge system.

Because of the budget crunch, visitors to some refuges this summer are likely to face everything from closed visitor centers to locked bathrooms and fewer or no interpretive programs.

Evan Hirsche, president of the National Wildlife Refuge Association and chairman of CARE, said some who visit one of Wisconsin 's refuges over this holiday weekend may already notice the difference.

"In many cases there will be no one to greet them, " Hirsche said. "Or they 'll find dilapidated boardwalks, kiosks, and no education programs. "

Crucial role

Though not as well-known as the country 's national parks, the 548 national wildlife refuges play a crucial role in not only providing recreational opportunities such as hunting and bird watching but also necessary sanctuaries for wildlife, including many rare and endangered species, Hirsche said. Created by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1903, the 100-million refuge acres help protect more than 250 threatened and endangered species of animals and birds.

Wargowsky said it is unlikely, for example, that efforts to bring back the nearly lost whooping crane would have ever gotten off the ground without the vast wetlands of Necedah National Wildlife Refuge and neighboring public lands. Necedah has played a key role in that international project. Baby whoopers are brought to the refuge early in the summer and trained to fly behind ultralight airplanes for their fall migratory flight to Florida. The goal is to establish only the second migrating whooper flock in North America and return the crane to Wisconsin and the Upper Midwest 's marshes.

The project has been so successful that whoopers are nesting again every spring at Necedah and private landowners also report sightings of the majestic birds with their distinctive red crest and croaking call.

Without Necedah 's extensive public lands, the state probably would not have been chosen for the whooping crane project, Wargowsky said.

The refuge is also home to the nation 's southernmost packs of gray wolves, and oak savannas and prairies have been restored to create habitat for the endangered Karner blue butterfly. Other rare species spotted on the refuge include the Blanding 's turtle and the massasauga rattlesnake.

The presence of these rare creatures and the increasing popularity of the refuge for birding has resulted in a steady climb in the number of visitors, according to Wargowsky. Annual visits have climbed within the last five years or so from 150,000 to 160,000 people each year.

Those visitors are a welcome boost to the area 's economy, said Terry Whipple, head of the Juneau County Economic Development Corp. People have come from all over the world to observe the whooping cranes, he added.

"That 's important to us, " Whipple said. "It 's one of our attractions that gives us international recognition. People are coming here from far away, and that means dollars in the community. "

Maintenance suffers

Yet Wargowsky struggles to maintain the refuge, to keep roads open and staff on hand to answer questions and help visitors. His counterparts elsewhere are also scraping, according to the CARE report. One in three of the nation 's 548 refuges operates without a single staff member. The system needs 845 full-time law enforcement officers but now has only 180, or one officer for every 555,000 acres.

With budgeted dollars for all refuges falling millions of dollars short of what is necessary to fully fund them, maintenance, in particular, is suffering. Invasive species, one of the greatest threats to these public lands and especially to rare plants and animals protected by the refuges, have taken over two million acres of the refuge lands.

Wisconsin refuges alone, according to the CARE report, are facing a backlog of maintenance projects totaling nearly $14 million.

At the 44,000-acre Necedah refuge, Wargowsky figures he 's running almost $2 million short of the $5 million he needs to adequately run the refuge each year. His maintenance staff has been reduced from three to one despite the rise in the number of visitors. "It hurts, " he said. "You 've got more work to do with less people. "

Wargowsky is only able to afford a clerk at the vistor center 's front desk two days a week and does the job himself the rest of the week, or relies on volunteers. Volunteers, especially those from the refuge 's friends group, have helped get through the funding crisis, Wargowsky said. He 's recruited two retired heavy equipment operators who help maintain the refuge 's graders and other machines and plow and grade the roads.

Federal budget

Elsewhere around Wisconsin, similar problems beset other refuges. Trempealeau National Wildlife Refuge on the Mississippi River has had to close public facilities, cut educational programs and reduce the number of staffers providing interpretive programs. At popular Horicon Marsh in Southeastern Wisconsin, manager Patty Myers is making do with just a single part-time maintenance worker. This makes it nearly impossible to adequately maintain the refuge 's dikes and levees upon which many of the marsh 's birds and animals, such as river otters, depend, according to the CARE report.

In Washington, D.C., U.S. Rep. Ron Kind, D-La Crosse, has battled to gain attention and additional money for the national wildlife refuges. He chairs a special caucus on the refuges and is also on the natural resources committee.

With the federal budget process coming to a close, Kind said he is working to win a minimal increase in the national refuge budget of $434 million, an amount that barely keeps pace with inflation.

The problem, Kind said, is that the refuges are often viewed in budgets as a convenient place to save money. The Bush administration has even suggested mothballing the refuges, Kind said, shutting some down completely.

But Kind, who is hoping to find an additional $15 million to $20 million for the refuges this budget session, said continuing to ignore the refuges would be a mistake that could lead to some of the lands being damaged beyond recovery by invasive species and other threats.

"If this continues, " Kind said, "I 'm afraid we 're going to see a real degrading in the quality of the refuges. The maintenance and other problems are really piling up now. And these are our monuments to civilization. We don 't have the Great Wall. We don 't have the pyramids. We have these public lands."

MORE INFORMATION

For more information on the nation's wildlife refuges and on Wisconsin refuges, go to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service page at

More information on Wisconsin's refuges can be found by going to

www.fws.gov  and click on the map to find the state's refuges. http://gorp.away.com and searching for "Wisconsin wildlife refuges."

Source: The Wisconsin State Journal

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