Oregon Islands National Wildlife Refuge

The Oregon Islands National Wildlife Refuge is a National Wildlife Refuge, located along the Oregon Coast, running from Tillamook Head in Clatsop County south to the California border near Brookings. This encompasses every rock or reef that is ever above the low tide line, and that is not connected to land. This is 1,853 "rocks, reefs and islands", as well as three small areas connected to the shore. All of these off-shore areas, as well as the three land areas, are valuable habitat for different types of sea birds, as well as for large marine mammals, such as seals and sea lions.

Most National Wildlife Refuges are discrete places, but the Oregon Islands NWR is more a blanket term for the entire off-shore ecosystem of the Oregon Coast. While the refuge is headquartered in Newport, Oregon, it is more of a concept, than a location. And indeed, other than one or two of the larger rocks, accessing any of those 1,853 rocks, reefs and islands by boat or helicopter would be very difficult. Even the largest of those islands is barely large enough to have a tree growing on it.

The off-shore areas are also designated as the Oregon Islands Wilderness, which at a listed area of a half square mile (although I don't know how that could even be calculated) is one of the smaller units of wilderness in the United States' system of wildernesses.

And as a final note, the existence of the Oregon Islands National Wildlife Refuge makes me realize what an assortment of jurisdictions natural and wild areas fall under. It is administered by the Fish and Wildlife Service, which is part of the Department of the Interior, but it adjoins areas that are run by the Bureau of Land Management (also part of the DOI), but also many areas of National Forest which are part of the Department of Agriculture, as well as State Parks, County Parks and City Parks.