About Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge
Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1937 to protect migratory birds. The Refuge has two divisions, the 20,532-acre Baring Division about 3 miles southwest of Calais, Maine and the 8,664-acre Edmunds Division about 3 miles south of Dennysville, Maine, directly adjacent to Dennys and Whiting Bays along U.S. Highway 1. Moosehorn NWR and the surrounding region are generally characterized by rolling hills, large rock outcrops, scattered boulders, and second-growth northern hardwood-conifer forest, and some pockets of pure spruce-fir. Numerous streams, beaver flowages, bogs, marshes, and forested wetlands are imbedded within the forested landscape.Moosehorn NWR contains over 4,500 acres of wetlands, including 28 functional impoundments or flowages that provide habitat for nesting and migrating waterfowl and marsh birds. The refuge has 18 miles of rocky shoreline along Dennys and Whiting Bays and 7 miles of shoreline on Meddybemps Lake. These small bays are part of the larger Cobscook Bay that supports the highest density of nesting bald eagles in the northeastern U.S. and has been essential to the recovery of the bald eagle in the east. The bay also provides critical migration and wintering habitat for the American black duck.There are two designated Wilderness areas on the Refuge. Moosehorn Wilderness was established in 1970 and now comprises more than 2,700 acres. The Baring Unit Wilderness was established in 1975 and now spans more than 4,600 acres.The Wilderness Act of 1964 created the National Wilderness Preservation System "in order to assure that an increasing population, accompanied by expanding settlement and growing mechanization, does not occupy and modify all areas in the United States, and its possession, leaving no lands designated for preservation and protection in their natural condition..."More information on wilderness.net.
