Wildlife Havens Squeezed by Human Needs

Aug. 31, 2005 — -- Here's the good news: 545 National Wildlife Refuges have been established in this country in a desperate effort to provide a habitat for the plants and animals that called this land home thousands of years before the first humans arrived. They are as diverse as the land itself, they can be found in every state, and they are the reason why many endangered species have survived.

But here's the bad news: Many of those refuges are under siege, not from within, but from without. Urban sprawl and increasing demands for various types of developments are threatening to overwhelm some refuges by wiping out critical buffer zones that adjoin these vital wildlife habitats.

The National Wildlife Refuge Association has identified six refuges in six different states as "at severe risk" because of incompatible encroachment upon their borders. They range from Stone Lakes, a unique urban refuge that is almost within a stone's throw of California's capital, to the Alaska Maritime refuge, a vast region that encompasses the entire Aleutian chain of islands, as well as numerous other islands in Alaskan waters.

The threats to each of the refuges are as different as the refuges themselves. In California, it is urban sprawl that has pushed the value of land into the stratosphere, making it very difficult to acquire acreage once destined for the Stone Lakes refuge. In Alaska it is an oil spill that began last December when a Malaysian tanker ran around and split in half, dumping more than 400,000 gallons of oil into waters that are vital to a wide range of animals. Nineteen vessels and 114 workers are still trying to clean up the mess.

The problem is basic. Human needs, resulting partly from rampant growth in population, are winning the war for diminishing lands. And it's going to get a lot worse.