Building Community Through a Refuge

By Dan Ashe

Director, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

The Albuquerque Business Journal in March named 30 women from a highly competitive pool of 435 nominees as this year’s Women of Influence in the state of New Mexico. The Journal was looking for women who are leaders, innovators, mentors and role models. It comes as no surprise that Jennifer Owen-White, manager of Valle de Oro National Wildlife Refuge, was an honoree.

Owen-White is pouring her heart and soul into Valle de Oro, the first urban refuge in the Southwest Region. And she is building the refuge with the people of Albuquerque. Valle de Oro is, “a refuge established, designed and built by the community for the community, and that is so exciting,” she says. That it is!

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U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service archaeologist Eugene Marino urges national wildlife refuges to look at cultural resources as opportunities to engage visitors and build relationships with local communities. National wildlife refuges present fascinating history along with outstanding wildlife.

“We run the gamut,” says Marino. There are rice plantations in the South, prehistoric fishing sites in the Northwest, a steamboat in the Missouri River, historic homesteads across the West, dinosaur fossils throughout Montana, World War II resources in the Pacific and Alaska, Native American burial sites across the continent. “It never ceases to impress me – the breadth of history that we have on refuges.”

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