About Us
The Hanford Reach National Monument, comprising over 196,000 acres in arid eastern Washington, was the first national monument national monument
A national monument is established by executive order of the president or by Congressional legislation. The Antiquities Act authorizes the president to proclaim “historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest” as national monuments. The National Wildlife Refuge System helps manage three national monuments: Hanford Reach National Monument in Washington state, Aleutian Islands World War II National Monument in Alaska and Tule Lake National Monument in California.
Learn more about national monument for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and broke the mold, so to speak, of what a national wildlife refuge national wildlife refuge
A national wildlife refuge is typically a contiguous area of land and water managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for the conservation and, where appropriate, restoration of fish, wildlife and plant resources and their habitats for the benefit of present and future generations of Americans.
Learn more about national wildlife refuge is. Yes, there is abundant wildlife, endangered species, and unique ecosystems. However, no other refuge is so focused on history, cultural resources, geology, paleontology, and other non-wildlife-related resources. Throw in an eligible wild and scenic river—rare for the agency outside of Alaska—and the FWS had to rethink how to manage resources with which it typically had little experience.
Our Mission
The mission of the National Wildlife Refuge System is “To administer a national network of lands and waters for the conservation, management, and where appropriate, restoration of the fish, wildlife, and plant resources and their habitats within the United States for the benefit of present and future generations of Americans.”
The Monument was established to protect “antiquities” and to set aside lands for scientific purposes. The Presidential Proclamation for the Monument defines the reasons the Monument was established and the purposes for which it is to be managed. The resources specifically mentioned include:
- A shrub-steppe ecosystem, including breeding populations of steppe and shrub-steppe dependent birds such as loggerhead shrikes, sage sparrows, sage thrashers, and ferruginous hawks.
- Water-related resources, including the 46.5 miles of the 51-mile long Hanford Reach of the Columbia River, fall Chinook salmon spawning areas, and sturgeon.
- A diversity of native plant and animal species, including rare and sensitive plant species such as Umtanum desert buckwheat and White Bluffs bladderpod; habitat for migratory birds, as well as resident species, including wintering habitat for bald eagles, white pelicans, and ducks; nesting sites for rare bird species, including prairie and peregrine falcons; and insect species new to science or not previously identified in the state of Washington.
- Microbiotic crusts.
- Significant geological and paleontological objects, such as the White Bluffs and Hanford Dune Field, and mammalian fossils of rhinoceros, camel, mastodon and others.
- Important archaeological and historic artifacts from more than 10,000 years of human occupation, including prehistoric pit houses, graves, spirit quest monuments, hunting camps, game drive complexes, quarries, hunting and kill sites, and more recent human activity such as homesteads and early towns.
Our History
The land comprising the Monument has an unusual and colorful provenance. The entry of the United States into World War II and the race to develop an atomic bomb led to a search for a suitable place to locate plutonium production and purification facilities. In 1943, the War Department (later to become the Department of Defense) went in search of a remote, easily defensible, geologically stable site, with plenty of cool water, abundant energy (from hydropower dams on the Columbia River), and a moderate climate, on which to build secret plutonium production reactors. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers selected a site in Washington State near the isolated desert towns of White Bluffs and Hanford. The War Department acquired land through condemnation and purchase of private lands and withdrawal of public lands within the basin formed by Rattlesnake Mountain and the Saddle Mountains. The Atomic Energy Commission, a precursor to the Department of Energy, then established and ran the Hanford Site (then known as the Hanford Engineering Works).
For more than forty years, the primary mission at the Hanford Site was the production of nuclear materials for national defense. The DOE developed infrastructure and facility complexes to accomplish this work in the central portion of the site, but large tracts of land were used as protective buffer zones for safety and security purposes and remained undisturbed. These buffer zones preserved a nationally significant biological and cultural resource setting in the Columbia Basin region, unique in that similar resources elsewhere in the Columbia Basin have been destroyed or replaced by development.
In the early 1970s, there was a reduced need for large safety and security buffer zones around the Hanford Site, and the DOE transferred management of portions of the “North” or “Wahluke Slope” (the area north of the Columbia River) to the FWS—through the creation of the Saddle Mountain National Wildlife Refuge—and to the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife. By the late 1980s, the primary DOE mission had changed from defense materials production to environmental restoration, waste management, and science and technology research, further decreasing the need for a large land base. In 1997, the DOE transferred the administration of the Fitzner-Eberhardt Arid Lands Ecology Reserve (ALE) to the FWS. In 1999, the Wahluke Slope lands managed by the WDFW, known as the Wahluke Wildlife and Recreation Area, were transferred to the FWS to be managed under DOE permit as part of the NWRS.
In the 1980s, concerns for protection of the Hanford Site’s natural and cultural resource values grew, as did interest in consolidating management under one natural resource agency. In 1988, Congress directed the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Energy to identify and evaluate the outstanding features of the Hanford Reach and its immediate environment— including fish, wildlife, geology, scenery, recreation, historic and cultural values—and recommend alternatives for their preservation. The resulting Department of the Interior report, the Hanford Reach of the Columbia River Comprehensive River Conservation Study and Environmental Impact Statement, identified the FWS as best suited to protect those values and the lands necessary to support them. After years of discussion and controversy, the question of protection was settled when President Clinton created the Monument through his powers under the American Antiquities Act.
Other Facilities in this Complex
The Central Washington National Wildlife Refuge Complex consists of three national wildlife refuges—Columbia, Conboy Lake, Toppenish—and the Hanford Reach National Monument. To learn more about the Complex, Please visit: Central Washington National Wildlife Refuge Complex.
