Beneath the Wings of the Flying Goose

"If you travel much in the wilder sections of our country, sooner or later you are likely to meet the sign of the flying goose - the emblem of the national wildlife refuges.  You may meet it by the side of a road crossing miles of flat prairie in the Middle West, or in the hot deserts of the Southwest.  You may meet it by some mountain lake, or as you push your boat through the winding salty creeks of a coastal marsh.

Whenever you meet this sign, respect it.  It means that the land behind the sign has been dedicated by the American people to preserving, for themselves and their children, as much of our native wildlife as can be retained along with our modern civilization.  Wild creatures, like men, must have a place to live."

- Rachel Carson

There's a joke (but is it a joke if it's not told in jest?) that I've heard a lot this past month, saying that maybe America doesn't deserve a birthday party this year.  Granted, if I had a child that acted that way that we, as a nation, have collectively behaved lately, I probably wouldn't be splurging on cake or presents for them either.  Still, I try to remind myself that political and cultural changes happen, and we cope with them the best that we can, but America isn't just a people.  It's a land - and it's a land that is also worth celebrating.

Despite some recent knuckle-dragging, America has in many ways been a country that's often been on the cutting edge, and that includes our conservation practices.   The United States is home to the world's first national park, Yellowstone, which (despite current flooding) still is an icon of conservation.  Besides being the first national park set aside for the enjoyment of a people, rather than a king or emperor or ruling family, it was also the site of one of the first deliberate attempts to reestablish a large carnivore back into the wild after it had been killed off, which is why it is once again possible to hear wolves howling in the lower 48.  Perhaps even more important as a story of America's national commitment to wildlife and wild places is the National Wildlife Refuge system.

The first NWR was designated by President Theodore Roosevelt, who wanted to protect the wading birds of Florida's Pelican Island from plume hunters in 1903.  The system was a patchwork of cobbled together pockets of habitat until Teddy's cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt became President in the 1930s.  With a team of conservation heavyweights J. N. "Ding" Darling, Thomas Beck, and Aldo Leopold at the helm, FDR saw the establishment of an interconnected National Wildlife Refuge system, under the auspices of the newly-reorganized Fish and Wildlife Service.  Remarkably, this system grew up in the midst of the Great Depression, when the focus of much of the country was on saving millions of Americans from poverty, not on the fate of ducks and elk.  FDR saw the health of the environment and the economy and intertwined and inseparable, however.  Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps carried out much of the labor in establishing and protecting the new reserves.

Today, there are close to 600 refuges across the country, some the size of a large backyard, some spanning millions of acres (the largest is the perpetually-threatened Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, which is constantly facing encroachment from those seeking to drill for oil on its 19 million acres.  The smallest is Mille Lacs Lake in Minnesota, only half an acre).

These refuges - and the wildlife that lives there - are an essential part of our country and its heritage.  They are not, however, inviolate citadels, beyond the reach of humanity and immune from whatever damage we can inflict.  Preserving them is an ongoing battle (especially for Arctic NWR).  I encourage everyone to pay a visit to an NWR, either their locale one or ones that may encounter while traveling.  Doing so is a great way to demonstrate support for some of the places that truly make this country remarkable and worth protecting.