Blue jay at Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge, ME | Keith Ramos/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
The National Wildlife Refuge System encompasses more than 850 million acres of land and waters across America’s 568 national wildlife refuges, including 5 marine national monuments. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) is responsible for managing these lands and is expected to fulfill its obligation to the Refuge System’s 64 million annual visitors and diverse wildlife on a budget of a mere 61¢ per acre per year, a fraction of what other land agencies receive. For comparison, the National Park Service receives $31 per acre for land management.
Refuge management requires investments in staff and tools to manage wildlife populations, recover endangered species, control harmful invasive species, adapt management strategies to address climate change, and provide opportunities for wildlife-dependent recreation. The Refuge System is grappling with a nearly 20% cut to its overall budget in the past ten years when factoring in inflation--a $120 million loss in capacity.
Roosevelt elk are the largest of the four subspecies of elk in North America. Roosevelt elk at Julia Butler Hansen Refuge for the Columbian White-Tailed Deer , WA | Jake Bonello / USFWS
This strain on resources has affected all aspects of the Refuge System. To reduce costs, refuges have had to cut numerous staff positions and sacrifice vital habitat management, visitor services, and maintenance activities. Even critical volunteer programs, which provide additional free labor equaling 20% of the Refuge System workforce, have been cut back or completely eliminated for lack of supervision from professional full-time staff, although Congress has recently included a small but meaningful increase for volunteer programs.
Despite this severely constrained budget, the Refuge System generates approximately 35,000 jobs and provides $2.4 billion in economic output each year. For every $1 appropriated to the Refuge System, an average of nearly $5 is returned to local economies. The National Wildlife Refuge System requires adequate funding to sustain these economic, social, and biological benefits for all Americans.