History
In 1972, Ester Lape donated over 150 acres (60.7 ha) of land in Westbrook, Connecticut to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. This donation became Salt Meadow National Wildlife Refuge. As neighbors donated or sold adjacent property to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Salt Meadow grew to be a 274-acre (110.9 ha) refuge.
As the state became more and more populated, coastal areas and islands were being developed at an alarming rate. Citizens began to worry that the long legged wading birds and other shorebirds that use Connecticut's Islands and Coast would soon be without important nesting and feeding habitat. With the help of non-profit groups like National Audubon Society, Saugatuck Audubon Society, The Nature Conservancy, Trust for Public Lands, and the Westbrook Land Trust, Sheffield, Chimon, and Goose Islands near Norwalk and Milford Point in Milford were acquired by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
In 1984, these Islands were added to Salt Meadow National Wildlife Refuge and the name was changed to Connecticut's Coastal National Wildlife Refuge. In 1987, the name of the refuge was again changed to honor US Congressman Stewart B. McKinney, who had an integral role in the refuge's formation.
In 2003, Calf Island in the town of Greenwich was added to the refuge. In 2005, Peach Island was added to the refuge. Through generous donations and the help of many partners, Stewart B. McKinney National Wildlife Refuge now consists of ten refuge units spread across 70 miles (110 km) of Connecticut's coastline, from Westbrook to Greenwich.
Read more about this topic: Stewart B. Mc Kinney National Wildlife Refuge
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“Bias, point of view, fury—are they ... so dangerous and must they be ironed out of history, the hills flattened and the contours leveled? The professors talk ... about passion and point of view in history as a Calvinist talks about sin in the bedroom.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)
“... that there is no other way,
That the history of creation proceeds according to
Stringent laws, and that things
Do get done in this way, but never the things
We set out to accomplish and wanted so desperately
To see come into being.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)