Qualla: Nestucca Bay National Wildlife Refuge

Nestucca Bay National Wildlife Refuge: Introduction

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Headquarters, Public domain. One-tenth of every dusky Canada goose on Earth winters in a place that used to be a dairy farm. That statistic alone would make Nestucca Bay National Wildlife Refuge remarkable, but it only begins to describe what 600 acres of restored coastal habitat can hold. Established in 1991 where the Nestucca and Little Nestucca rivers meet the Pacific in southern Tillamook County, the refuge contains seven distinct habitat types compressed into a narrow coastal strip -- tidal marsh, mudflats, grassland, woodland, pasture, forested lagg, and freshwater bogs. Among them is the southernmost coastal Sphagnum bog on the entire Pacific Coast, a place where carnivorous sundew plants digest insects and bog cranberries grow in the acidic peat.

Image: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Headquarters | Public domain

Nestucca Bay National Wildlife Refuge: Where Geese Count on Short Grass

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit USFWS - Pacific Region, Public domain. The dusky Canada goose is a subspecies found almost nowhere else. It breeds in Alaska's Copper River Delta and winters along the Oregon and Washington coasts, and its population has been a species of concern for decades. Nestucca Bay's short-grass pastures -- remnants of the old ...

Image: USFWS - Pacific Region | Public domain

Nestucca Bay National Wildlife Refuge: The Bog at the End of the Line

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit USFWS - Pacific Region, Public domain. The Sphagnum bog is a biological outlier. Coastal Sphagnum bogs stretch along the Pacific from Alaska southward, but this is where the chain ends -- the southernmost example on the coast. In the bog, spongy moss builds up over centuries into a raised peat dome, creating condition...

Image: USFWS - Pacific Region | Public domain

Nestucca Bay National Wildlife Refuge: From Dairy Farm to Refuge

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit USFWS - Pacific Region, Public domain. The land did not always look like this. Before 1991, much of the refuge was a working dairy farm, its pastures grazed, its wetlands drained by ditches. Establishing the refuge began the slow process of undoing that alteration -- removing drainage infrastructure, allowing tidal fl...

Image: USFWS - Pacific Region | Public domain

Nestucca Bay National Wildlife Refuge: A Complex Within a Complex

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit USFWS - Pacific Region, Public domain. Nestucca Bay is one of six refuges that form the Oregon Coast National Wildlife Refuge Complex, a chain of protected sites stretching along the state's shoreline. Each refuge addresses a different piece of the coastal ecosystem puzzle. Nestucca Bay's contribution is its diversity...

Image: USFWS - Pacific Region | Public domain