For the Winter Wonderland Seekers

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Updates from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

4 min readDec 19, 2016

By Bill O’Brian, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

“You can’t get too much winter in the winter,” American poet Robert Frost wrote. That’s not true for everybody, we know, but if you enjoy clean, crisp air and the great outdoors, winter is a special time of year at national wildlife refuges in northern latitudes.

Here are just a few of the things that make winter wonderful at national wildlife refuges: Invigorating recreation … a chance to glimpse wildlife … a serene respite from the daily grind.

Going for a Walk Outside

J. Clark Salyer National Wildlife Refuge in North Dakota. (Photo: Colette Guariglia/USFWS)

If the holidays leave you craving outdoor time, be sure to take a few moments and find your local national wildlife refuge to take a much needed outdoor walk.

Snowshoeing

Seney National Wildlife Refuge, MI. Photo: Jack Cook / USFWS

Snowshoeing can be a blast at national wildlife refuges from Alaska to Oregon to West Virginia to Maine and lots of places in between, including Des Lacs National Wildlife Refuge(above) in North Dakota.

Ice Fishing

Ice fishing is fun for kids and adults at Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge (left and top right) in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois, at Selawik National Wildlife Refuge (bottom right) in Alaska and at other refuges across Alaska, the northern Plains, the Great Lakes states and New England. Here are some refuges popular for ice fishing.

Cross-Country Skiing

Get your heart pumping, your muscles stretched and your lungs refreshed with some cross-country skiing at dozens of refuges, including Kootenai National Wildlife Refuge in Idaho, Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge (left) in New Jersey, Aroostook National Wildlife Refuge in Maine and Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge in Minnesota. Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge in West Virginia also is a particularly outstanding place for cross-country skiing.

Building Snow Forts

You can build a snow fort, if you feel like it, as these girls did at Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge (above), about 50 miles north of the Twin Cities in Minnesota.

Wildlife Watching

You can see iconic North American bald eagles at Lower Klamath and Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuges along the California-Oregon border, Camas National Wildlife Refuge in Idaho, Upper Mississippi River National Fish and Wildlife Refuge in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois, Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge in Maryland and numerous other refuges across the country. Check out “Winter at Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuges” (video).

You might see curious river otters like these at Missouri’s Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge (above), about 90 miles north of Kansas City, and at many other refuges.

You might see diving harlequin ducks at Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refuge in Rhode Island. The harlequin ducks, which get their name from their bright clown-like plumage, are rare along the Atlantic Flyway, but impressive numbers of them gather off the rocky shores of Sachuest Point near Newport, RI.