Seeking Refuge examines the development and management of refuges in the wintering range of migratory birds along the Pacific Flyway from Mexico to Alaska, the westernmost of four major migration routes in North America. Many of the key places migratory birds use are sites of recent contentious debates over water usage. In a time when global warming promises to compound the stress on water and migratory species, this book demonstrates the need to foster landscapes where both wildlife and people can thrive.--Robert Wilson is assistant professor of geography at Syracuse University.

"Wilson puts the biological problems within the context of a long history of competing land-use interests, water entitlements, and overlapping mandates of powerful federal agencies. . . . This is a very clearly written book that deals concisely with a hundred years' worth of complex confrontations and conflicts. . ."

"The author’s skill in examining the interplay between wild birds, their increasingly manufactured habitats, and the varied human institutions responsible for altering them makes for a compelling story that readers will find fascinating."

The author's skill in examining the interplay between wild birds, their increasingly manufactured habitats, and the varied human institutions responsible for altering them makes for a compelling story that readers will find fascinating. -- William K. Wyckoff, Montana State University Wilson ranges across the entire refuge system of the Pacific Slope in order to observe the dynamics and management challenges associated with the whole flyway. The result is a tour de force of historical and geographical analysis that will surely become a standard work on its subject. -- William Cronon, University of Wisconsin By surveying the complex history of the Pacific Flyway, Robert Wilson has provided us with the portrait of a win-win ecology, one where the needs of a bewildering variety of migratory waterfowl are met even amidst the surging activity, agriculture, and land transformations of humankind. More than this, he has shown us that such reconciliation ecologies are very political indeed. Eschewing environmental romances typical of conservation by stressing historical struggles over land and water, Wilson nevertheless preserves a wonder for a 'natural' world always in-the-making. -- Paul RobbinsProfessor of Geography at the University of Arizona and, author of Lawn People How do American farm policies reshape wild landscapes to produce food for people? How do American wildlife policies reshape wild landscapes to produce habitat for ducks? These may seem like quite different questions, but Robert Wilson's Seeking Refuge brilliantly reveals the interconnections between wildlife refuges and agricultural systems in the West. Wilson explores how the toxic waste water running off farm fields became integral to wildlife refuges. Irrigated agriculture fed a hungry nation while it created wetland habitat for migratory waterfowl. But the results poisoned both chicks and children. Clearly argued and wonderfully written, Seeking Refuge illuminates the intricate connections between wildlife and people in America. -- Nancy Langston, University of Wisconsin-Madison