page_title: Malheur National Wildlife Refuge
section_title: Devastation and study of bird life
hierarchical_section_title: Malheur National Wildlife Refuge / History / Devastation and study of bird life
caption_attribution_description: English: Hand painted glass slide of a White Pelican at take-off in Malheur Lake. Taken by Finley and Bohlman during a 1908 photography trip to Malheur that would later help Malheur become a bird refuge in 1908.
context_page_description: Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is a National Wildlife Refuge located roughly 30 miles south of the city of Burns in Oregon's Harney Basin. Administered by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, the refuge area is roughly T-shaped with the southernmost base at Frenchglen, the northeast section at Malheur Lake and the northwest section at Harney Lake.
  The refuge was created in 1908 by order of President Theodore Roosevelt to protect habitat for diverse waterfowl and migratory birds, and grew to encompass 187,757 acres of public lands. A popular site for birding, fishing, hunting and hiking, the refuge gained widespread attention in early 2016 after its headquarters complex was occupied by armed anti-government protesters.
context_section_description: The remarkable abundance and diversity of bird life within the pre-irrigation Malheur region was first described by Charles Bendire in the middle 1870s. Beginning in the late 1880s, the area's bird populations were devastated by the actions of plume hunters who harvested the showy feathers of Malheur's waterfowl for use as hat ornaments. In 1908, wildlife photographers William L. Finley and Herman Bohlman documented the area's unusual diversity of birds, as well as the detrimental impacts of plume hunting. Finley used photographs to personally lobby President Theodore Roosevelt for federal protection of the region.
caption: Hand-painted slide of an American white pelican taken at Malheur Lake in 1908.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS4 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2016:01:08 22:25:03", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4304", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2677", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1591"}