Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge

The Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge has a total area of about 4.9 million acres that include 2,500 islands stretching from the western end of the Aleutian Islands across the southern reaches of offshore Alaska to Forrester Island in the southeastern Alaska panhandle region. This is an amalgamtion of what formerly was ten different National Wildlife Refuges and Wilderness Areas. Today, about 2.64 million acres of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge is designated wilderness. Somewhere between 15 and 30 million Alaska native birds use the refuge. In addition, about 40 million migratory seabirds use the refuge in the warmer months for nesting and feeding purposes. The waters in this refuge also contain whales, walrus, sea lions, seals and sea otters.

The landscape here is a mix of steep, stark mountains and sea cliffs intrspered with boreal forests and war relics from World War II. You'll find volcanoes venting steam, great forests of kelp, rocks, reefs, islets, spires, waters and headlands. Traveling across this property is the equivalent of traveling from California to Georgia. Some areas aren't too hard to get to but most of this National Wildlife Refuge is only for the deep-of-pocket and intensely-driven. In many areas along the mainland it is fairly easy to charter flights in small aircraft but landing on any of these islands... that's a whole other world: a bit better than half the surface area of the refuge is designated wilderness and motorized vehicles of any sort are forbidden. There's also the problem of flying into the huge flocks of birds that an aircraft is going to stir up... both coming and going.

Many of the native birds on these islands occur nowhere else on the planet. The introduction of foxes and shiprecked rats has been catastrophic in some areas. The Aleutian Canada goose was a listed endangered species until the Fish & Wildlife Service succeeded in removing fox from about 1 million acres of the goose habitat. And rats are an even greater threat to the wildlife than oil spills in the area. When a shipwreck happens around here, the first team on-site is usually the "rat spill" response folks.

Located along the Pacific Ring of Fire, the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge also includes most of the active volcanoes in the United States.