UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT of the INTERIOR, Oscar L. Chapma^m Secretary 
FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE, Albert M. Day, Director id- 
BEAR RIVER 
A NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE 
V 
REFU6E 
By Vane\ T. Wilson and B^achel L. Carson 
Illustrations by Bob Hines 
Conservation in Action NUMBER EIGHT 
IF YOU TRAVEL MUCH in the wilder sections of our country, sooner or later you 
are likely to meet the sign of the flying goose— the emblem of the National 
Wildlife Refuges. 
You may meet it by the side of a road crossing miles of flat prairie in the 
Middle West, or in the hot deserts of the Southwest. You may meet it by 
some mountain lake, or as you push your boat through the winding salty creeks 
of a coastal marsh. 
Wherever you meet this sign, respect it. It means that the land behind the 
sign has been dedicated by the American people to preserving, for themselves 
and their children, as much of our native wildlife as can be retained along 
with our modern civilization. 
Wild creatures, like men, must have a place to live. As civilization creates 
cities, builds highways, and drains marshes, it takes away, little by little, the 
l^nd that is suitable for wildlife. And as their space for living dwindles, the 
^^^/wildlife populations themselves decline. Refuges resist this trend by saving 
some areas from encroachment, and by preserving in them, or restoring where 
necessary, the conditions that wild things need in order to live. 
Cover: Egret and yellow-headed blackbird 
4 ■ 
Opposite page: Avocets 
UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE • WASHINGTON : 1950 
FOR SALE BY THE SUPERINTENDENT OF DOCUMENTS, WASHINGTON 2 5, D. C. • PRICE 10 CENTS 
Bear River 
A NATIONAL WI 
J N THE AUTUMN OF 1824 A BUFFALO-HIDE CANOE 
drifted down the Bear River to its mouth in the 
Great Salt Lake of Utah. Within sight of that 
vast inland sea, Jim Bridget must have paused 
in amazement. Everywhere he looked — in the 
sky, on the open water, over the marshy borders 
of the lake — there were birds. It is said that 
the famous explorer of the western wilderness 
brought back reports that he had that day seen 
“millions of ducks and geese.” 
The Bear River marshes were soon to know 
years when their waterfowl were numbered, 
not by millions, but by thousands; when the 
white settlers had diverted water for irrigation 
and drained the wet lands where the waterfowl 
found food and protection; when gunners had 
slaughtered them by the thousands; and many 
others had fallen prey to diseases resulting from 
this disastrous series of events. 
But now a miracle of conservation has been 
accomplished, and once again, as in the days of 
Jim Bridger, the skies over Bear River are pat- 
terned with millions of wings. The Bear River 
Migratory Bird Refuge which helped accom- 
plish this miracle is one of the show places of 
the continent. About 20,000 people visit it an- 
nually. Here, especially during the fall mi- 
gration, it is literally possible to see a million 
LDLIFE REFUGE 
ducks in one day. Here many species consid- 
ered rare elsewhere may be seen by anyone who 
will drive his car slowly around the miles of 
gravel road that crown the retaining dikes of 
the marshes. Here are birds that, in their north 
and south flights, have touched almost all parts 
of the western half of the continent. The site 
of this great spectacle is a key spot in the con- 
servation of North American birds. 
The Bear River marshes were not always as 
they are today. The setting of the refuge has 
been molded, first by the slow processes of na- 
ture, then more rapidly through changes re- 
sulting from human settlement of the region. 
Some of the latter changes have been for the 
better, some for the worse. 
High up on the flanks of the mountains 
around the flat marshlands of the refuge there 
are plainly marked terraces that stand out as 
light streaks against the blue background of 
the mountains. These were the shorelines of 
ancient Lake Bonneville, a large inland sea that 
covered some 20,000 square miles of this part of 
the world during the Pleistocene Epoch, some 
scores of thousands of years ago. Rain and 
snow fell heavily during those times, and streams 
ran full with the water of melting ice during 
the interglacial periods. Lake Bonneville was 
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