About Green Bay National Wildlife Refuge
On February 21, 1912, President William Howard Taft established Green Bay National Wildlife Refuge, our nation’s 28th refuge and only the second refuge in the Great Lakes region. Located in Lake Michigan, off the tip of Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula, the refuge started as a mere 2-acre island that was originally named Green Bay Reservation. Today, this essential stopover habitat for birds and other migratory species consists of five islands and is framed by Wisconsin and Michigan. The refuge is now made up of the following six units: Hog Island, WisconsinPlum Island, WisconsinPilot Island, WisconsinA 148-acre parcel of land on Detroit Island, Wisconsin1,260 acres of St. Martin Island, MichiganRocky Island, Michigan These islands act collectively as stepping stones for migrating birds, bats and butterflies as they cross along this section of the Niagara Escarpment – an outcropping of limestone that stretches in a wide arc from eastern Wisconsin through Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, across Ontario, Canada and on through the Niagara Falls in New York.Long before European settlement in Wisconsin, several different Native American Tribes occupied and traversed where were historically called “the Potowatomi Islands.” Located in what is now northern Door County, Wisconsin and southern Delta County, Michigan, this archipelago enabled otherwise distant Tribes an opportunity for safer travel and trade among Lake Michigan’s treacherous waters.The chain of islands sprinkled between peninsulas are valuable patches of habitat for a variety of migratory species during both the migration and the breeding season. Hog, Pilot and Rocky islands are valuable as colonial waterbird breeding, nesting and loafing sites. The location of these islands near forage fish habitat, combined with their remote and undisturbed condition, offer these species of migratory birds the necessary protected habitat. Habitat for colonial waterbirds has been under intense pressure on some Great Lakes islands as sho
