The number of people interested in wildlife watching and learning is actually growing. Increasing visitation and the opportunities for connecting people with nature requires that more people learn about wildlife refuges and feel welcome to visit. The Service must ensure that all visitors feel safe, welcomed, and oriented. Visitors should be able to interact with refuge staff or volunteers at all national wildlife refuges.
Visitors should be welcomed and oriented both when coming to the wildlife refuge and visiting virtually. Wildlife refuges are places of seasonal and specialized uses. Some of the most awe-inspiring spectacles of nature occur on wildlife refuges, but they are not year-round events. From the sandhill cranes and snow geese flying in and out of Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge to the salmon surging up the Kenai River, ancient seasonal cycles and rhythms play out across the Refuge System. A visit to a wildlife refuge is always special, but if the birds have not arrived yet or the fish are not biting, potential visitors need to know. A variety of tools, especially communications tools such as websites, social media and mobile applications must be used to invite and prepare people for their visits. Visitors need up-to-date information on what is happening on national wildlife refuges, throughout the seasons.
Many visitors will continue to depend on highway signs on the way to the wildlife refuge, directional signs once they get there, and on-site brochures, interpretive kiosks or visitor centers to explain wildlife. Basic signage and visitor facilities remain key elements in welcoming and orienting visitors, but increasingly people are finding their way using GPS units and doing online research before their visit. Interpretive information is sought from wireless devices and high-speed cellular service. America is now a wired nation not accustomed to waiting for information.
Recommendation: Develop a new, integrated strategy for using technology, social media, web applications, and emerging communications avenues to inform, orient and engage with visitors and the public.
The strategy will describe how the Service will provide: information to welcome and orient potential visitors and encourage their stewardship of natural resources; up-to-the-minute information for wildlife refuge visitors, volunteers, Refuge Friends and others; virtual experiences for those who cannot visit in person; environmental education kits for teachers who may bring students and those who will lead their students on virtual trips and encourage a land ethic; and information in both technical and popular formats about the important conservation work of the Service. The strategy must integrate the development of wildlife refuge websites and social media with other emerging tools and applications. The web page for a national wildlife refuge should be viewed as a primary public face of the wildlife refuge and the Refuge System. Content must be current, accurate, approachable and engaging.
For over a century the Refuge System has provided a variety of wildlife-dependent recreational opportunities. The numbers of people engaged in wildlife observation on wildlife refuges – especially birding and photography – are on the rise. Our interpretive and educational programs are becoming more comprehensive and help people understand the ecological processes that are at work in providing for healthy fish and wildlife communities. Adding multi-language signs and bi-lingual staff is helping the Refuge System be more welcoming to even more Americans.
In the end, promoting relevance to the lives of everyday Americans is about access. People care about what they know and what they can experience. Wildlife refuges must be accessible to all, regardless of their location or the physical abilities of visitors, but never at the expense of the purpose of conserving wildlife.
Transportation systems are the veins that connect America’s cities, towns, and places. With the need to reduce the emission of heat trapping gases from fossil fuels, alternative and clean modes of transit are becoming larger components of community and regional planning. The Service can enhance public accessibility to the wonders it manages while reducing impacts to the environment using alternative transportation on high-visitation, capacity-limited national wildlife refuges.
Recommendation: Wildlife refuges must participate in regional transportation planning. A priority should be linking people to wildlife refuges from more urban areas.
Service field stations should also work with local municipalities to facilitate transportation for seniors and people with disabilities. Wildlife refuges must continue to work to standardize inclusive accessibility by retrofitting existing facilities to current Americans with Disabilities Act standards and adopt the Universal Trail Assessment Process as a national standard. Training staff to relate to and assist persons with special needs can make wildlife refuges more welcoming places.
Small scale, low maintenance visitor facilities such as trails, observation towers and blinds, boat launching ramps, interpretive signs and kiosks have proven to be a cost-effective way to provide additional opportunities for all visitors to access and enjoy wildlife refuges. Additionally, many new visitors arrive at wildlife refuges without the specialized equipment they need to enhance the wildlife watching experience such as binoculars, spotting scopes, digital cameras and field guides. The Service has made great strides through its Birding Initiative to make sure wildlife refuges have these items to loan to visitors. Some have developed multimedia such as podcasts and other aids to help visitors explore the wildlife refuge. Others have fishing gear available to loan. A helping hand from staff and volunteers and the loaning of gear make visitors feel welcome and increase the likelihood they will return.
Recommendation: Compile an up-to-date inventory of visitor facility enhancements that must be constructed, maintained and prioritized with an emphasis on improvements that increase the accessibility of Service facilities.
Recommendation: Every staffed wildlife refuge should have specialized equipment available to loan and enhance visitors’ experiences.
Becoming more accessible to urban populations is one of the Refuge System’s most critical challenges. There are some national wildlife refuges close to large cities. However, most are in the wilder corners of America, beyond easy reach for most people living in the nation’s largest metro areas. Though some cities are now expanding further into the countryside – changing once rural wildlife refuges into something more “urban” – it is not likely that many new national wildlife refuges will be established near the most populous cities in America. Most large cities have excellent regional, county or local parks and nature areas. There is huge opportunity for the Service to create a new type of urban presence for wildlife and the Service’s mission through partnerships with local land managers and other federal, state, and tribal entities.
Recommendation: The Service should consider establishing national wildlife refuges in urban areas if the land is valuable for wildlife.
Recommendation: Develop public land partnership “portals” or wild land recreation and environmental education partnerships with local parks and nature areas to help an increasingly urban population find ways to enjoy their local resources and raise the profile of the Refuge System.
The job of reaching city dwellers to foster their connection to nature and whet their interest in wildlife stewardship requires many players and partners. The Service can play an appropriate, cost-effective role by bringing information to urban residents, welcoming them to visit and providing virtual experiences for those who cannot visit. Green spaces in cities have limited wildlife value, although they are important to protect for other reasons.
If efforts succeed in drawing new and different visitors to wildlife refuges, then they must first and foremost feel safe. Some people think wild places are dangerous places. Those fears must be dispelled. Front line personnel on national wildlife refuges are poised to address these and other concerns that visitors to wildlife refuges may have.
Refuge Law Enforcement officers share these front lines of interaction with visitor service staff and volunteers. Other field staff, including administrative specialists, biologists and maintenance professionals who interact with the public, also need to project a welcoming message. They should be happy to share their knowledge and experience about the refuge and wildlife. In many regions, information needs to be shared, verbally and in writing, in more than one language.
Recommendation: Conduct periodic, scientific surveys to monitor and evaluate visitor expectations and experiences with a special focus on children, families, and culturally diverse groups. Use data to assess the effectiveness of the Public Use Requirements Field Station Reviews, identify areas of growing public interest, and facilitate the development of new strategies to enhance national wildlife refuge visitor services and nature-based opportunities.
Recommendation: The Service must invest in or recruit for language skills in its employees because languages other than English have become key to successful communications with the public.
Comment below and/or move on to next section of Chapter 4 - Broadening Refuge Visitation and Use
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Just a few questions here. What is meant by the phrase: “Our interpretive and educational programs are becoming more comprehensive” – ? And is that our goal for these programs?
“Develop public land partnership “portals” or wild land recreation and environmental education partnerships with local parks and nature areas to help an increasingly urban population find ways to enjoy their local resources and raise the profile of the Refuge System.” A good example of this is the America’s Outdoors Center in Milwaukee, WI. Does the FWS have an employee based there yet?
I feel each NWR needs an expanded ability to post refuge activities, unplanned closures, etc. in a timely manner on its website. It is disconcerting to drive a significant distance to a refuge only to find it closed or trails blocked because of local conditions/events…after checking its website first.
BT Lubinski
I really appreciate the efforts being made by the U.S.Fish and Wildlife Service to make national wildlife refuges more accessible to the public. Although I have long been an enthusiastic camper and hiker, I was unclear of how NWR related to my interests–and I believe I am not the only one who was in the dark. In creating public outreach programs, the Refuge system can show how wildlife is accessible to all. It seems that the U.S.Fish and Wildlife Service is on the right track. Not only are they opening their doors to a greater demographic of people by incorporating bilingual staff, volunteers, and information, but they are looking to guide all visitors, regardless of their experience with the outdoors. They aknowledge that while some visitors are well educated about NWR, others are novices to the many enjoyable activities. In providing visitor facilities and an approachable staff, Wildlife Refuges are taking the steps to make nature accesible to all. Through all these changes, NWR maintains their priorities, as activities are “never at the expense of the prupose of conserving wildlife”. For this I applaud them.
“Recommendation: The Service should consider establishing national wildlife refuges in urban areas if the land is valuable for wildlife” This is a tepid recommendation. If we should establish more urban refuges, then say so; if not, don’t.
“Recommendation: Conduct periodic, scientific surveys to monitor and evaluate visitor expectations and experiences with a special focus on children, families, and culturally diverse groups. Use data to assess the effectiveness of the Public Use Requirements Field Station Reviews, identify areas of growing public interest, and facilitate the development of new strategies to enhance national wildlife refuge visitor services and nature-based opportunities.” The first sentence is great. The rest is unnecessary and also gets into agency jargon.
“Many visitors will continue to depend on highway signs on the way to the wildlife refuge, directional signs once they get there, and on-site brochures, interpretive kiosks or visitor centers to explain wildlife.”
I believe the goal of our interpretive kiosks and visitor center exhibits is more than “explain wildlife”. I’m not sure I know what that means. I believe our goal is to facilitate visitor opportunities that help a visitor connect both emotionally and intellectually with the refuge resources so that they can be moved to environmental stewardship.
I do believe social media will be the future of our lives on refuges and hatcheries and how we can communicate with different visitors. (nothing beats good old face to face communication!)
Just like we need to seek out staff with Environmental Education and Interp degrees to educate, we need to also seek out Social Media Specialists to help improve and create a “better face” in this new and changing world of computers!
Protect animals and humans from hunters, kick off welfare ranchers , farming, protect wild horses, burros and all wildlife.
I appreciate the intent to better engage our ever expanding urban demographic, however, I’m concerned about the wisdom of attempting to create “urban” refuges, if the sole purpose is to engage urban residents. While there are currently several successful refuges adjacent to some of our larger urban areas, I think including this as a recommendation may result in us “forcing” the issue and thereby designating a sliver of land in an overwhelming urban landscape that will only become more developed with time and ultimately compromise the species we’re trying to protect. As an alternative, I’d suggest instead bringing the refuge to the urban area. That is to say, enclose the urban area within the much larger landscape (e.g., watershed, mountain range) containing a mix of wild and developed lands. The Service would only acquire a real estate interest in those lands meeting the strict wildlife and habitat criteria of the refuge system, but we would create an endless range of opportunities to interact with the residents of such landscape-based refuges, ultimately engendering a critical sense of ownership.
“Visitors should be able to interact with refuge staff or volunteers at all national wildlife refuges.” To do this we need more visitor services staff, and more emphasis on keeping them.
In the technology mix, are we developing a phone app about refuges yet?
“Develop public land partnership “portals” or wild land recreation and environmental education partnerships with local parks and nature areas to help an increasingly urban population find ways to enjoy their local resources and raise the profile of the Refuge System.” Make sure when doing this that the USFWS is recognized and credited.
I would like to see the refuge system sponsor and create a regular, once a week wildlife minute on National Public Radio, similar to the weekly “StarDate” but on wildlife topics, giving people a glimpse of what they might view or do in nature. You have mentioned here “the sandhill cranes and snow geese flying in and out of Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge to the salmon surging up the Kenai River, ancient seasonal cycles and rhythms play out across the Refuge System.” I think also of the shorebirds and horseshoe crabs of the Delaware Bay and the seasonal display of woodcock.
Regarding use of wildlife refuge websites as a “primary public face” — I agree with the branding approach discussed later in this chapter as it applies to similar look and feel to refuge websites, but in order for the refuge website to be current and comprehensive, it cannot be managed by or routed through a regional office. Currently our refuge uses the Friends website as its primary face because we have the ability to provide real-time information to visitors and other interested parties. Refuge staff-driven web updates would be the only way to provide comparable efficiency, and still a government website has red tape that would limit what could be conveyed to the public. Maybe thoughtful coordination with and linkage to Friends websites is the best answer.
Regarding technology and social media — I believe that although some refuges and regions have already ventured into social media, there should be a much more strategic approach, especially with regard to Facebook. Although the potentially vast audience reachable through Facebook is undeniable, opening the door to such a labor-intensive interface may be more than many refuges with limited staff and resources can handle. More efforts should be focused on applications for mobile devices. I was aware of a potential iPad/iPhone app for NWRs over a year ago, but has it floundered???
Recommend that we inventory all signage with GIS/GPS and ensure adequate locations for directional signage to help the public locate refuge offices, entrances, etc. be planned and designed effectively.
Recommend that every NWR has at least one Visitor Contact Point – even if the Refuge is closed to public access – to tell the story of the lands and resources behind the sign/fence.
Establishing Refuges within one hour of all major US cities – with an Environmental Education component seems like a good goal
The committee may want to consider adding language about the content of the website being “user friendly”
Additionally, under the recommendation that every staffed refuge should have equipment available for use, the committee may also want to list that the refuge advertises or communicates via website, etc. that that equipment is available for use and what equipment it is. Unfortunately, although equipment is available for use, which is a fantastic idea, if someone would like to visit a refuge but does not know that borrowing equipment is a perk…they may not visit in the first place, thereby, never knowing that the equipment was there.
I think what sets us apart from other public lands is that we provide wildlife-dependent opportunities. It helps relate to the public what we are about. It seems that in this Vision Document we are replacing wildlife-dependent oportunites with nature-based opportunities. I would like to see us use Wildlife-dependent.
This is awkwardly written and only addresses one-on-one opportunities. Recommendation: The Service must invest in or recruit for language skills in its employees because languages other than English have become key to successful communications with the public.
I think what is meant is that the Service should provide messages in several languages.
I agree that the Service should not create more urban refuges solely for the purpose of attracting city dwellers. But it’s important to recognize that green spaces in urban areas are not always of limited value for wildlife. They can be important corridors for wildlife migration and for connecting wildlife populations at risk of being isolated by development. Wildlife may only use these lands for brief periods of the year, but during the times when they’re in use, they can be essential habitat. The Service should consider creating urban refuges when those refuges function as essential seasonal habitat or as corridors for population connectivity, and when existing urban open space does not accomplish that purpose.
The statement that most large cities have excellent park systems is debatable at best. There is actually immense city-by-city variation in the quantity of urban park land, in absolute terms and per capita, while the quality of many urban park systems is in decline due to budget constraints. Many older cities are now trying to increase park lands, create urban greenways, and attract volunteers and financial support. They’re working with organizations that haven’t traditionally been engaged in conservation work. The Service might find there’s a potential for new partnerships in urban areas.