Threats to the integrity of protected sensitive areas: A geographic analysis of the National Wildlife Refuge System in the western conterminous United States

The sensitive natural areas of the United States protected by the National Wildlife Refuge System represent invaluable environmental and cultural resources. Changing patterns of human land use in areas adjacent to some refuges, a growing demand for recreational use of some of the protected wildlife areas, and other threats raise concerns about their future and the future of the entire system.;Relationships between basic refuge characteristics and respective conditions and threats were determined for the full study population of 95 refuges as well as a selected substudy group. Certain characteristics were identified as regional, while most were uniquely local. Also, most threats or problems were of a relatively local nature rather than regional or national. Some differences in refuges appear to have origins in operational and management characteristics.;The refuges of the western United States share many characteristics, conditions, and problems which are to some extent zonally arranged from north to south and peripherally arranged. Environmental patterns explain part of the zonation and regional groupings. Some characteristics inherent to particular wildlife refuges were identified as associated with the conditions of and threats to those refuges. Regional clustering was measured by standard statistical analyses of data obtained from a survey returned by 95 of 210 refuge managers in late 1994 and early 1995. Four refuges were examined carefully as case studies to determine the behavior, perceptions, opinions, and attitudes of visitors, local landowners, and local officials. The geographical situation and associated problems of these four refuges proved to be complex and significant to understanding threats, management, and, perhaps, public policy alternatives. Local attitudes toward these refuges indicate that landowners and officials near refuges are quite aware of types of management problems experienced and the roles of local citizens and recreational users of these refuges.;The patterns and problems revealed in this study verify the difficulties experienced by the managers of the refuges in their efforts to maintain federal governmental standards applied to the entire system in the face of uniquely local pressure and demands created within the geographical contexts of each refuge.;This study indicates that the integrity of some national wildlife refuges in the United States are more threatened than others. The environmental and human characteristics of a sample group of these refuges along with identification of their threats and conditions suggested geographical patterns related to the regional contexts of these individual management units. Differences of these characteristics were related to the primary mission of each refuge, and were often related to whether the wildlife refuge was managed for migratory waterfowl, big game, or game range.;This extremely important national debate may be illuminated by the approaches, the data, and the findings of this study, which offers a geographical perspective on the problems associated with the National Wildlife Refuge System. These findings are pertinent to other sensitive natural areas managed by other federal, state, local, and private agencies and organizations.