316 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1940 



The concentration of refuges for migratory waterfowl along the 

 Atlantic coast and along the Mississippi Valley indicates the signifi- 

 cant grouping of these areas. This is noticeable also in the con- 

 centration of such refuges in northern California, across Nevada, 

 Utah, Wyoming, and Nebraska, and into Minnesota, Iowa, and Wis- 

 consin. These represent restoration or improvement of breeding- 

 ground areas and are an important contribution to the restoration of 

 suitable environmental conditions for the migratory game birds in 

 these territories. We have by no means completed this part of 

 the program. In addition to purchased areas we have surveyed 

 something over 8,000,000 acres of marsh or potential marshland, 

 which may include areas that can be developed into new marshes or 

 old marshland that may be purchased and restored at a reasonable 

 figure. These proposed areas, if added to the existing ones, would 

 adequately provide feeding and wintering grounds for the present 

 stocks of migratory waterfowl. They w^ould also add to the breed- 

 ing-ground area of such major refuges as it is now possible to pur- 

 chase and develop at a reasonable cost. It is unquestionably true 

 that more of these areas will become available in the future as eco- 

 nomic conditions change. 



The ultimate objective in developing this system of refuges is to 

 restore every acre of marsh in the breeding range of waterfowl that 

 can be restored. We have more than reached the halfway point, 

 and a great increase has taken place in the past 7 years. It will 

 require in the neighborhood of $10,000,000 of land-purchase money 

 to add to this refuge system the major units that are still lacking and 

 that are available at a reasonable figure. 



An interesting side line of the waterfowl refuge system, which has 

 for its purpose the development of existing small breeding areas, was 

 inaugurated in North Dakota a number of years ago and has now 

 spread to Montana, Wyoming, and some of the other neighboring 

 States. This is the so-called easement refuge program, wherein the 

 Fish and Wildlife Service provides the engineering supervision, 

 W. P. A. labor develops the structures and does the work, and the 

 landowners give perpetual easement to the Federal Government to 

 flood the land and to maintain these units as migratory waterfowl 

 breeding refuges. There are now 84 of these projects, and the total 

 acreage restored by them runs to about 147,000. These refuges vary 

 in size from 160 acres up, but each has restored an old marsh or 

 developed a new one to replace those that have been destroyed by 

 drainage and drought combined. Thousands of similar areas can be 

 restored as money to do it becomes available. We have on file appli- 

 cations from landowners and others for hundreds of additional proj- 

 ects of this nature. These wiU require only such restoration of 



