Ouray National Wildlife Refuge (also called Ouray National Waterfowl Refuge) is a wildlife refuge in central Uintah County, Utah in the northeastern part of the state. It is part of the National Wildlife Refuge system, located two miles northeast of the village of Ouray, 10 miles southeast of the town of Randlett, and 30 miles (50 km) southwest of Vernal.
Established in 1960, it straddles the Green River for 12 miles (19 km), and covers 11,987 acres (48.5 km2). A portion of the refuge (3,800 acres) is leased from the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation. The refuge was created for the use of both local and migratory birds, and with funds provided by the sale of Federal Duck Stamps.
Precipitation is less than seven inches (178 mm) per annum.
Famous quotes containing the words national, wildlife and/or refuge:
“Perhaps our national ambition to standardize ourselves has behind it the notion that democracy means standardization. But standardization is the surest way to destroy the initiative, to benumb the creative impulse above all else essential to the vitality and growth of democratic ideals.”
—Ida M. Tarbell (1857–1944)
“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)