Bear Lake National Wildlife Refuge

Bear Lake National Wildlife Refuge is a 19,000-acre property that includes most of the Dingle Marsh (or Dingle Swamp, as some of the local folks call it). The Dingle Marsh is a mix of openwater, bulrush marsh and flooded meadows of rushes, native grasses and sedges. Most of the Bear Lake NWR is in the valley at 5,295', but it rises up on the slopes of Merkley Mountain to about 6,800'. The upper reaches of the property are mostly brush covered slopes and scattered grasslands.

The refuge is managed to provide optimum breeding and nesting habitat for 6 specific species: Canada geese, trumpeter swans, white-faced ibis, sandhill cranes, and canvasback and redhead ducks. Several fields around the edges of the marsh are cultivated to grow alfalfa and barley for the waterfowl and cranes. In a typical nesting season, Bear Lake NWR will produce 4,500 ducks and 1,800 geese. Canvasback, redhead, mallard and gadwall ducks, plus northern shoveler and cinnamon teal also use the refuge for nesting. Usually in the bulrushes you'll find double-crested cormorant, black-crowned night heron, great blue heron, snowy egret, white-faced ibis, Franklin's gull, California gull, Forster's tern, black tern, Caspian tern, eared grebe and western grebe. The Dingle Marsh area provides enough differing habitat to appeal to 161 different species of birds. The sandhill cranes make their presence felt most in late September when they descend on the refuge grainfields. You might see between 200 and 500 of them at a time. Bear Lake NWR also harbors one of the largest nesting colonies of the now-rare white-faced ibis.

For mammals, you'll find muskrats, cottontail rabbits, skunks, beavers, badgers, mink, weasels, coyotoes, mule deer and even some moose who usually hang out down in the refuge willows.

To get there: the office is in Montpelier, just go east off Route 30 in Montpelier on Webster Street. To get to the refuge: West of Montpelier on US Highway 89, about halfway between Montpelier and Ovid you'll find a marked gravel road going south. Follow that for about 5 miles to the refuge boundary.