Port Louisa National Wildlife Refuge
Port Louisa National Wildlife Refuge
Wapello, IA 52653
Phone:319-523-6982
Fax:319-523-6960
Web: www.fws.gov/midwest/PortLouisa
Established: 1958 as the Wapello District of Mark Twain NWR Complex. Named Port Louisa NWR in 2000.
Location:5 miles east of Wapello on Country Road X61.
Activities:Hunting, fishing, boating, canoeing, hiking, bicycling, berry and mushroom picking for personal use, environmental education, wildlife observation.
Special Features:Refuge comprises four divisions, each with unique characteristics, but all located within the Mississippi Flyway, one of the nation's most important bird migration routes. The primary refuge management objective is to provide waterfowl and migratory birds with food, water, and protection during the spring and fall migration.
Habitats: 8,375 acres of bottomland timber, backwater sloughs, marshes, wet meadows and grasslands.
Access: Daylight hours. Refuge's Big Timbers unit is open year round; other areas are closed part of the winter.
Wild life: Migratory birds, Indiana and gray bats, bobcat, fox, white-tailed deer, rabbits, lemmings, moles, freckled madtom, catfish, slender glass lizard, copperhead, alligator snapping turtle, stinkpot turtle, frogs, and sirens.
See other parks in Iowa.