Overflow National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) is a 13,973 acre (56.55 km²) national wildlife refuge in Ashley County,

Arkansas Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the O ...

. Overflow NWR is one of three refuges forming an administrative complex, which also includes Felsenthal NWR and Pond Creek NWR to the west.

Habitat and Wildlife

Overflow National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) was established in 1980 to protect one of the last remaining bottomland hardwood forests in the Mississippi Alluvial Plains. These forests are considered vital for wintering migratory waterfowl populations in the

Mississippi Flyway The Mississippi Flyway is a bird migration route that generally follows the Mississippi, Missouri, and Lower Ohio Rivers in the United States across the western Great Lakes to the Mackenzie River and Hudson Bay in Canada. The main endpoints of ...

. The refuge is composed of nearly 14,000 acres of bottomland hardwood forests, shrub wetlands, moist-soil units, and upland pine-hardwood forests. It also contains a

old growth An old-growth forestalso termed primary forest, virgin forest, late seral forest, primeval forest, or first-growth forestis a forest that has attained great age without significant disturbance, and thereby exhibits unique ecological featur ...

Sugar Maple ''Acer saccharum'', the sugar maple, is a species of flowering plant in the soapberry and lychee family Sapindaceae. It is native to the hardwood forests of eastern Canada and eastern United States. Sugar maple is best known for being the prim ...

and American Beech forest. Overflow NWR has been recognized as a state-wide Important Bird Area by the National Audubon Society. Carefully timed flooding of the bottomlands and moist-soil units stimulates the growth of native wetland plants,

insects Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body (head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs of j ...

crustaceans Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapods, seed shrimp, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods, barnacles, copepods, amphipods and mantis shrimp. The crustacean gro ...

, and mollusks. These high energy foods are crucial for the survival of migratory

waterfowl Anseriformes is an order of birds also known as waterfowl that comprises about 180 living species of birds in three families: Anhimidae (three species of screamers), Anseranatidae (the magpie goose), and Anatidae, the largest family, which i ...

and shorebirds.

References

External links

Overflow National Wildlife Refuge's Official Website
National Wildlife Refuges in Arkansas Protected areas of Ashley County, Arkansas 1980 establishments in Arkansas Protected areas established in 1980 {{Arkansas-protected-area-stub