>National Wildlife Refuge Centennial

Labor of Love

Friends of the Refuge volunteers, like those at Anahuac in Texas, aren't afraid to use a little elbow grease—or a pair of chest waders—to improve their local treasures.

by Jennifer Bogo

On a clear, cool Saturday morning at Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge along the upper Texas gulf coast, Miss Loda Gibson, a retired schoolteacher, is greeting visitors with B.J., her 15-year-old granddaughter. Standing thigh-high in Shoveler Pond is Lu Skillern; her husband, Grady, a retired medical trainer, is in a boat nearby. They are both hand-treating invasive water hyacinth with an approved aquatic herbicide while doing their best to steer clear of the 100 or so gators that live in the water. Meanwhile, Dennis McManus, an employee of the Chambers County road and bridge division, is cheerfully cleaning the refuge's new bathrooms.

These volunteers—along with Friends of the Refuge groups at 230 other wildlife refuges across the country—are filling a vital niche in a system that's struggling to do a very big job with very limited resources. The 40,000 Friends members around the country may be birders, hunters, anglers, ranchers, or farmers, but they all share the same goal: to protect the wealth of wildlife in their common backyard.

David Sarkozi, a microsystems analyst at the Houston University Police Department and president of the Friends of Anahuac, hands me a pair of binoculars as we head out to the Yellow Rail Prairie, where he leads early-morning bird walks.

A few steps later, the binoculars hardly seem necessary: Wildlife here is big, and it's everywhere. A great blue heron stands statuesquely on the gravel road in front of us. An osprey zigzags overhead with a giant channel catfish dangling from its talons. Rings ripple across the water where an eight-foot alligator sinks slowly beneath the surface.

photo by Robb Kendrick

"The most important part of volunteering here is the sense of ownership in the refuge that develops" says Sarkozi, turning his head to take in some of the 34,000 acres of wetlands laced by muddy bayou. "We all want to take good care of it." And they are. Since it was formed in 1996, Friends of Anahuac has built a 750-foot boardwalk and a photography blind, and has opened up a tract of land for public use that includes fishing piers, observation towers, and two miles of hiking trails. The Friends run the nature store they started, restore native prairie, and band snow geese. They're about to build a butterfly garden.

"Those are the tangible things," points out Andy Loranger, project leader for the Texas Chenier Plain Refuge Complex, of which Anahuac is a part. "But the intangible things, like acting as a bridge to the community, are also invaluable."

"Ten years ago refuges were not only grossly underfunded but invisible," says Molly Krival, who is a consultant to the Board of Friends of Ding Darling, a refuge in southwestern Florida; an Audubon member; and widely considered the matriarch of the Friends movement. "Friends groups will often do something as simple as hold an annual festival. Now lots more Americans know at least one refuge in their state and care about them. It's a huge change."

photo by Robb Kendrick

With a constant eye out for potential recruits, Lu Skillern outfits me in a pair of hip waders and guides me into the small pond behind the information station, where she frequently teaches area schoolchildren about wetlands. It's rimmed with dry brown cattails, and today's mission is to eliminate the few bright green stalks that remain. We touch each one with a glove dipped in the aquatic herbicide, so that the chemical affects only the intended target. While cattails are native, they also tend to take over, and digging them out can be backbreaking work. "If we don't control them very quickly, there won't be any open-water habitat left," says Lu, "just a weedy marsh." A new Audubon report, "Cooling the Hotspots," cites invasive species as one of the most critical threats to one-third of the bird species on the Audubon WatchList. For its part, Anahuac provides much-needed refuge to such WatchList species as the mottled duck, the long-billed curlew, the cerulean warbler, the piping plover, and the yellow rail. National funding for control measures, however, is pitifully low (see "The Second Century").

Chuck Reddell, an avid duck hunter by hobby and an ultrasound technologist by trade, strides up in a marsh-grass–camouflaged hat and matching windbreaker and orders Lu and me out of the water before lightning moves in. An ominous blue-black has darkened the horizon, and thunder rumbles in the distance. Undaunted, Lu stays in to grab a few more cattails.

photo by Robb Kendrick

This past winter Reddell and some 170 Friends members from across the country visited Capitol Hill, acquainting congressional representatives with their local refuges and advocating an increase in funding for the refuge system. Refuge staff can't lobby for their own cause, but Friends can—and do. The refuge budget for the 2003 fiscal year passed at $368 million—that represents a $48 million increase, the largest ever. "When 230 groups from numerous congressional districts are all speaking the same language with an opinion on the same issues, it can be a very powerful voice," says Evan Hirsche, president of the National Wildlife Refuge Association, a Washington, D.C.–based organization that helps strengthen Friends groups and unify them nationally.

photo by Robb Kendrick

A few miles down the road at High Island's Boy Scout Woods Sanctuary, Houston Audubon member Celeste Newton registers visitors. She, too, is a member of Friends of Anahuac, as well as the nearby Friends of Trinity River. Friends groups and Audubon chapters often share members, she says. "A common interest in conservation pulls us all together. It's a hand-and-glove fit."

To learn more about joining or starting a Friends of the Refuge group, contact the National Wildlife Refuge Association at 202-333-9075 or visit www.refugenet.org. For examples of innovative ways Audubon chapters pitch in at their local refuges, see Audubon in Action.