Query the National Wildlife Refuge System Lands Database

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[State Summary by Unit] [Unit Summary by State]

The National Wildlife Refuge System consists of over 530 wildlife refuges, 38 wetland management districts (administering over 26,000 waterfowl production areas), and 50 coordination areas.

National Wildlife Refuges account for more than 96 percent of the acreage in the National Wildlife Refuge System. Almost 83 percent of the land in the Refuge System is found in the 16 refuges in Alaska.

More than 88 percent of the acreage in the National Wildlife Refuge System was withdrawn from the Public Domain. Lands purchased with Land and Water Conservation Fund appropriations and Migratory Bird Conservation Fund receipts account for 4.6 percent of acres in the National Wildlife Refuge System.

The following definitions are used to categorize the lands placed into the three tables that make up the lands within the National Wildlife Refuge System. These definitions are used to solely to place the real property holdings into reference tables and are not the same definitions used in Title 50 of the Code of Federal Regulations to identify the lands within the Refuge System.

National Wildlife Refuge - any area of the National Wildlife Refuge System, except Coordination Areas and Waterfowl Production Areas. The 547 areas categorized under the national wildlife refuge heading are listed in Table 3 of the Annual Report of Lands.

Wetland Management District - an office whose primary responsibility is to manage waterfowl production areas.

Waterfowl Production Area - any wetland or pothole area acquired pursuant to the Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp Act or other statutory authority and administered as a part of the National Wildlife Refuge System. Waterfowl production areas are aggregated by county for real property purposes. The over 26,000 waterfowl production areas are aggregated into 201 waterfowl production counties which are administered by 37 wetland management districts. These property holdings are listed in Table 4 of the Annual Report of Lands.

Coordination Area - any area administered as part of the National Wildlife Refuge System and managed by the States under cooperative agreement between the Service and a State Fish and Wildlife Agency. For convenience in maintaining records, several areas managed by other organizations are included in this table. All of the  coordination areas are listed in Table 5 of the Annual Report of Lands.  

1. National Summary
If you want the acreage for the entire National Wildlife Refuge System use this search form. You can limit the summary results to any one of the three tables or get a summary for all three tables.

2. State Summary
If you want the acreage for the entire National Wildlife Refuge System within a specific state use this search form. You can limit the summary results to any one of the three tables or get a summary for all three tables.

3. State Summary by Unit
If you want the acreage for each individual unit of National Wildlife Refuge System within a specific state use this search form. You can limit the results to any one of the three tables or get information for all three tables.

4. Unit Summary by State
If you want the acreage for an individual unit of National Wildlife Refuge System showing the acreage from all states where it is found use this search form. This search will provide different results from the results of the State Summary by Unit only where the unit is found in more than one state.

You must know the name of the unit before you can use this search form. If you enter an incomplete name or incorrect name, you may get back the combined results from more than one unit. If you are unsure of the name of the area, you should do a search using the State Summary by Unit to obtain the correct name of the unit.

Note:  All data is taken from the "Report of Lands Under Control of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service" as of  September 30, 2000.

Division of Realty   National Wildlife Refuge System
Fish and Wildlife Service - National Programs   Regions

http://realty.fws.gov/nwrs.html - revised 24 April 2001