Pond Creek National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) is a 27,300 acre (110 km²) national wildlife refuge located in Sevier 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 ...

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

Habitat and Wildlife

The refuge consists of nearly 30,000 acres of bottomland hardwood forests and is bordered on the east and west by the Cossatot River and the

Little River Little River may refer to several places: Australia Streams New South Wales *Little River (Dubbo), source in the Dubbo region, a tributary of the Macquarie River * Little River (Oberon), source in the Oberon Shire, a tributary of Coxs River (Haw ...

. Pond Creek’s bottomland hardwood forests are dissected by an intricate system of rivers,

sloughs A slough ( or ) is a wetland, usually a swamp or shallow lake, often a backwater to a larger body of water. Water tends to be stagnant or may flow slowly on a seasonal basis. In North America, "slough" may refer to a side-channel from or feedin ...

, and

oxbow lakes An oxbow lake is a U-shaped lake or pool that forms when a wide meander of a river is cut off, creating a free-standing body of water. In South Texas, oxbows left by the Rio Grande are called '' resacas''. In Australia, oxbow lakes are calle ...

. Because the refuge is situated in an area where the

Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...

and Central flyways overlap, waterfowl species from both flyways can be observed.

History

Pond Creek National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) was established in 1994 under the authority of the Emergency Wetlands Resources Act of 1986. The refuge was originally named "Cossatot", after the Cossatot River that flows on the refuge’s eastern boundary. By the request of local citizens, the refuge’s name was changed in 1997 to retain the previous name that the area was known by – “Pond Creek Bottoms”.

References

External links

Pond Creek National Wildlife Refuge's Official site
National Wildlife Refuges in Arkansas Protected areas of Sevier County, Arkansas Wetlands of Arkansas Landforms of Sevier County, Arkansas Protected areas established in 1994 1994 establishments in Arkansas {{Arkansas-protected-area-stub