Kofa National Wildlife Refuge
| Kofa National Wildlife Refuge | |
|---|---|
|
IUCN category IV (habitat/species management area)
|
|
 |
|
| Location | Yuma County and La Paz County, Arizona, United States |
| Nearest city |
Yuma, AZ-S Quartzsite, AZ-N |
| Coordinates | 33°16′00″N 114°00′00″W / 33.26667°N 114.00000°WCoordinates: 33°16′00″N 114°00′00″W / 33.26667°N 114.00000°W |
| Area | 665,400 acres (2,693 km2) |
| Established | 1939 |
| Governing body | US Fish & Wildlife Service |
| Website | Kofa National Wildlife Refuge |
The Kofa National Wildlife Refuge is located in Arizona in the southwestern United States, northeast of Yuma and southeast of Quartzsite. The refuge, established in 1939 to protect desert bighorn sheep, encompasses over 665,400 acres (2,693 km2) of the Yuma Desert region of the Sonoran Desert. Broad, gently sloping foothills as well as the sharp, needlepoint peaks of the Kofa Mountains are found in the rugged refuge. The small, widely scattered waterholes attract a surprising number of water birds for a desert area. A wide variety of plant life is also found throughout the refuge.
The name Kofa comes from a former area gold mine: the King of Arizona mine (active from 1897 to 1910), with Kofa a contraction of the name.
In 1936, the Arizona Boy Scouts mounted a statewide campaign to save the bighorn sheep, leading to the creation of Kofa. The Scouts first became interested in the sheep through the efforts of Major Frederick Russell Burnham, the noted frontiersman turned conservationist who co-founded Scouting Burnham observed that fewer than 150 of these sheep lived in the Arizona mountains. He called George F. Miller, then scout executive of the Boy Scout council headquartered in Phoenix, with a plan to save the sheep. Burnham put it this way:
I want you to save this majestic animal, not only because it is in danger of extinction, but of more importance, some day it might provide domestic sheep with a strain to save them from disaster at the hands of a yet unknown virus.
Several other prominent Arizonans joined the movement and a "save the bighorns" poster contest was started in schools throughout the state. Burnham provided prizes and appeared in store windows from one end of Arizona to the other. The contest-winning bighorn emblem was made into neckerchief slides for the 10,000 Boy Scouts, and talks and dramatizations were given at school assemblies and on radio. The National Wildlife Federation, the Izaak Walton League, and the Audubon Society joined the effort.
...
Wikipedia