National Wildlife Refuge
As a National Wildlife Refuge ( NWR abbreviated ) Nature Reserves in the United States are referred to, are managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, which reports to the Ministry of Interior. The National Wildlife Refuge System consists of over 500 protected areas on land and water, whose job it is to protect animals and their natural habitat and maintain it. With few exceptions, the individual areas carry a " National Wildlife Refuge ", " Wetland Management District " or " Wildlife Management Area " in their name.
The first National Wildlife Refuge was created with the Pelican Iceland NWR on the Atlantic coast of Florida on March 14, 1903 by then U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt to life. In 2004, 388,533 km ² of land and 184,852 km ² water surface in 634 administrative units under the care of the National Wildlife Refuge System, including 547 National Wildlife Refuges. To this end, over 36,000 small-scale protected areas eligible for waterfowl, of which are 95% water holes in the prairie states of North and South Dakota, Minnesota and Montana. They have an average size of 36 ha and are in otherwise intensively cultivated areas the only habitats for many wildlife and resting places for migratory birds. The program for the purchase of Waterfowl Production Areas is funded through the sale of Duck Stamps, which must prove each hunter per geschossenem on public lands waterfowl. It has existed since 1934, and is made possible with revenues of over $ 700 million to protect more than 21,000 km ².
Most conservation areas are open to visitors, but a few particularly vulnerable subject to a prohibition order. In more than 300 National Wildlife Refuges was to be determined by inventory investigation times to hunt single wild species released around 270 NWR allow fishing. In the NWRS the Fish and Wildlife Service, nearly 80 Wilderness Areas are embedded, the most severe class of protected natural areas in the United States. Every year, the Wildlife Refuges have over 40 million visitors.
Two of the largest Wildlife Refuges, Becharof National Wildlife Refuge and Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge (both in Alaska), had been in 1978, first reported by U.S. President Jimmy Carter as National Monuments and were after massive political critique of both the State of Alaska and the U.S. Congress in a package on the revision of all nature reserves in Alaska, the Alaska National Interest Lands conservation Act, 1980 downgraded to the status of Wildlife Refuges.