The Little Pend Oreille National Wildlife Refuge is a wildlife preserve, one of the National Wildlife Refuges operated by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. The 42,594-acre (172.37 km2) refuge is located east of Colville, Washington along the west slope of the Selkirk Mountain Range. It lies mostly in eastern Stevens County, but a small part extends eastward into western Pend Oreille County. It is the only mountainous, mixed-conifer forest refuge outside of Alaska and the largest in Washington state.
Wildlife found in the refuge include numerous songbirds, bald eagles, elk, black bears, moose and white-tailed deer.
Public uses include hunting, fishing, hiking, and horseback riding.
Famous quotes containing the words national, wildlife and/or refuge:
“Let us waive that agitated national topic, as to whether such multitudes of foreign poor should be landed on our American shores; let us waive it, with the one only thought, that if they can get here, they have God’s right to come.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Russian forests crash down under the axe, billions of trees are dying, the habitations of animals and birds are layed waste, rivers grow shallow and dry up, marvelous landscapes are disappearing forever.... Man is endowed with creativity in order to multiply that which has been given him; he has not created, but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate is ruined, and the earth is becoming ever poorer and uglier.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.”
—Leonard Cohen (b. 1934)