Scientist of the Day - Pelican Island
U.S. Postal Service 37c stamp, issued in 2003, commemorating the centennial of the designation of Pelican Island as the first National Wildlife Refuge on Mar. 14, 1903 (postalmuseum.si.edu)
On Mar. 14, 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt signed into law an act declaring tiny Pelican Island on the east coast of Florida a National Wildlife Refuge, the country's first such refuge. The island sits in a lagoon at the mouth of the Indian River, near Sebastian, about halfway up Florida's eastern coast. It was (and is) a nesting site for brown pelicans, and a feeding place for roseate spoonbills, snowy egrets, and the like.
Aerial view of Pelican Island, near Sebastian, Florida (Wikimedia commons)
That the island needed protection was obvious to Paul Kroegel, a local German immigrant, who watched plume hunters ravage the island's bird population in the late 19th century. It bothered him so much that he took to spending his days on the island with his shotgun, ready to repel invaders, which was clearly not a long-term solution to the problem. So, enlisting the help of a prominent New York ornithologist, Frank Chapman, and the Florida Audubon Society, they managed to persuade President Roosevelt to create a National Wildlife Refuge program for places like Pelican Island. Roosevelt, already a conservationist, did not take much convincing.
Paul Kroegel, one of the principal instigators for preserving Pelican Island, and the first wildlife manager of the Refuge (firstrefuge.org)
Roseate spoonbills in a mangrove swamp on Pelican Island, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (www.fws.gov)
Pelican Island is a really small island, just 3 acres, but the refuge encompasses surrounding marshes and islands and covers some 5400 acres in all. The island itself has suffered from severe erosion, and I don’t think there is much left of the original brown pelican nesting site. But one hopes there are other National Wildlife Refuges where they can procreate their kind in peace and be safe from human predators. This is likely, because there are now some 568 refuges in the national system, protecting over 850 million acres. The National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) program is run by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS).
Satellite view of Pelican Island and the National Wildlife Refuge at the mouth of Indian River, east coast of Florida, photograph, NASA (earthobservatory.nasa.gov)
The U.S. Postal Service, in 2003, issued a 37c stamp, commemorating the centennial of Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge, and of the NWR program as a whole (first image). There are bronze plaques replicating the stamp at various locations in the reserve. I could not find a photo of a pelican sitting on one of the plaques, but I found the next best thing, a photo of a brown pelican perched on a sign, copying the pose of the pelican depicted on the stamp (sixth image).
A brown pelican right at home on Pelican Island, in the pose of the USPS commemorative stamp of 2003, photograph, U.S. Field & Wildlife Service (atlasobscura.com)
In 1963, Pelican Island, because of its status as the first National Wildlife Refuge, was designated a National Historic Landmark, giving it further protection against encroaching land developers and USFWS budget cuts.
William B. Ashworth, Jr., Consultant for the History of Science, Linda Hall Library and Associate Professor emeritus, Department of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City. Comments or corrections are welcome; please direct to ashworthw@umkc.edu.
