Malheur National Wildlife Refuge

In 1908 the wildlife photographers William Finley and Herman Bohlman, working with the Audubon Society of Portland, persuaded Theodore Roosevelt to set aside Malheur, Mud and Harney lakes as a preserve and breeding ground for native birds; their photographs of the lake's grebes, ibis, pelicans and gulls from that year survive. The reservation protected the birds but not their water. The Donner und Blitzen River that fed Malheur Lake ran through private ranchland upstream, and as the lake dwindled, Finley and Portland Audubon understood that the refuge needed the river's water rights. In 1935 the government bought the old P Ranch and the Blitzen valley with them and folded the land into the refuge.

The newest threat is under the water. Common carp, not native here, root up the lake bottom, cloud the water and destroy the plants and insects the birds depend on; refuge research has found that they have cut migratory bird productivity on Malheur Lake by more than ninety percent. Beginning in the 1990s the Burns Paiute Tribe, whose ancestors' homeland this is, ranchers, environmental groups, county officials and federal agencies began working together on how the refuge is managed, and the fight against the carp is a central part of that work.

Spring is the season to come. Millions of birds stop here on migration, sandhill cranes and white-faced ibis, swans, ducks and shorebirds among them, and the Harney County Migratory Bird Festival brings birders to the basin each April. The refuge headquarters is on Sod House Lane south of Malheur Lake, near the old Sod House Ranch where this pin sits.