America gets two new protected areas for wildlife

The United States Fish and Wildlife Service has established two new wildlife refuges in the continental US, increasing the number of protected areas under the Service’s care to 570.

In celebration of National Wildlife Refuge Week, FWS announced that it had successfully established and opened two new units in its national refuge system: the Paint Rock River National Wildlife Refuge in Tennessee and the Wyoming Toad Conservation Area set up in southeastern Wyoming.

The former is established to protect endangered cave-dwelling species, while the latter will serve as managed habitat for a critically endangered species of toad. As one of two US federal government agencies charged with implementing the Endangered Species Act, FWS forms protected areas or conservation easements to defend threatened or endangered species against the threat of extinction.

In a release, FWS detailed how a cooperative arrangement with the city of Laramie, Wyoming helped it to form the Wyoming Toad Conservation Area. A map included in the Service’s official Land Protection Plan for the Wyoming toad shows how the new conservation zone encompasses all or parts of three existing wildlife refuges, portions of the Laramie and Little Laramie Rivers, and most of the city of Laramie.

FWS says the Wyoming toad is “one of the most endangered amphibians in North America.” In addition to new conservation easements to be managed as part of the new Conservation Area, FWS says it also set up the reserve in part through the purchase of over 1,000 acres using the US Department of the Interior’s Land and Water Conservation Fund.

“The area is also important for the conservation of other species including the white-tailed prairie dog, pronghorn, and migratory birds,” FWS said.

The Paint Rock River National Wildlife Refuge, Tennessee’s newest, is located in the south-central portion of that state just west of the city of Chattanooga, close to the border with Alabama. The 87-acre tract was given to FWS as a donation from the Open Space Institute and The Nature Conservancy.

The Service says establishing the new Tennessee refuge is important to help tie together other protected lands in the region, as well as to preserve an important watershed and forest.

The new wildlife refuge also boasts a cave system that’s home to endangered species of bats and the Alabama cave shrimp, a rare species listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act and by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

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