CALIFORNIA, Md. – In early March of this year, an announcement was made by The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service concerning their plans to conserve 30,000 acres of land by expanding the Southern Maryland National Wildlife Refuge System across five different counties, those counties being Calvert, Charles, St. Mary’s, Anne Arundel, and Prince George’s.
According to the USFWS, the reason conserving this land is so important is because, “currently unprotected habitats in these counties support significant populations of fish and wildlife appropriate for protection by the National Wildlife Refuge System, primarily threatened and endangered species, waterfowl, and migratory birds of conservation concern. These species face habitat loss from land use changes, climate change, competition from invasive species, and other stressors.”
The idea is to create a “landscape scale” refuge on par with the Rappahannock River Valley National Wildlife Refuge located in Virginia. This refuge was first created in 1996 and consists of 10,000 acres across five counties.
This proposal came along while Prince George’s County made plans to develop 97 acres of land consisting mostly of forests and ponds near the Patuxent Research Refuge between DC and Baltimore.
The USFWS proposal was not triggered by this action however.
Inspiration for this project came from President Barack Obama’s 2009 executive order that directed all federal agencies to come up with a coordinated strategy to protect the Chesapeake Bay.
The main focus of the plan is to protect the continually eroding Calvert Bayshore Cliffs, the habitat of the endangered Puritan tiger beetles.
Other areas of interest include the watersheds of Mattawoman and Nanjemoy creeks, Zekiah Swamp and the St. Mary’s and Patuxent rivers. These locations are home to increasingly rare species of plants and animals like the dwarf wedgemussel, swamp pink, shortnose sturgeon, and Northern long-eared bats.The documents detailing the USFWS’s proposal can be found at https://www.fws.gov/project/proposed-new-refuge-lands-southern-maryland.
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