U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Comprehensive Conservation Plan Columbia National Wildlife Refuge U.S. Department of the Interior U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Columbia National Wildlife Refuge 64 Maple Street Columbia Burbank, WA 99323 Phone: 509/546-8300 National Wildlife Refuge Fax: 509/546-8303 E-Mail:
[email protected] http://www.fws.gov/columbia Comprehensive Conservation Plan National Wildlife Refuge System Information 1 800/344 WILD September 2011 The mission of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is working with others to conserve, protect and enhance fish, wildlife, and plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people. Western skink USFWS, Wm. Radke Cover Image: Ferruginous hawk chick September ©Tom Tietz 2011 A Desert Vision Columnar basalt pillars, lava flows and other channeled scabland formations provide the dramatic backdrop for the Columbia National Wildlife Refuge landscape, as they have for thousands of years. Intermingled with lands managed by other Federal agencies and the State of Washington, the Refuge helps to create a connected system of wildlife habitats important to migratory and resident species. A few thousand acres of lakes and wetlands, along with their adjacent uplands, attract many thousands of mallards, northern pintails, Canada geese, Sandhill cranes, and other migrating waterfowl and waterbirds to this otherwise arid environment. Long-billed curlews, Wilson’s phalaropes, black-necked stilts, and American avocets find nourishment in the refuge’s mudflats and nest in nearby grasslands. Shrub-steppe habitat on Columbia National Wildlife Refuge is healing from the scars of wildfires, invasive species, and other adverse impacts, with loggerhead shrikes, sage thrashers, sage sparrows, and other sagebrush-obligate species becoming more abundant within contiguous blocks of bunchgrass and sagebrush habitat.