Pre-Visit Planning

Refuge Assistance

Educators may lead their own field trips or may contact the refuge to schedule a tour guide. Refuge staff and volunteers are also available for lesson planning assistance and short orientation programs. The refuge has a library of learning materials that can be checked out for use in the classroom.

Making Reservations

In order to accommodate as many groups as possible, advanced registration is strongly recommended for all school groups visiting the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge.

The contact page includes the phone number and a link to the email address for the refuge. The link to the refuge calendar will help you select a date.

Refuge Facilities

Parking: located at the entrance to the Carty Unit Restrooms: located near the parking lot of the Carty Unit Drinking Water: none Garbage: none

Emergency Contacts

Seasonal Closures

Carty Unit: Open to hiking year round.
River "S" Unit, Kiwa Trail: Closed October 1 - April 30.
River "S" Unit, Auto Tour Route: Open, but visitors must remain inside their vehicles, except at the observation blind and the main entrance restroom.
Bachelor Island, Roth, and Ridgeport Dairy Units (wildlife sanctuaries): Closed to all traffic. However, from Lower River Road, Ridgeport Dairy Unit wildlife viewing is allowed.

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Become familiar with these ecological concepts before your trip!

Everything has a home.

During your field trip, you will be walking in, around, and through several animals' living rooms, dining rooms, kitchens, bedrooms, and bathrooms. We call these homes habitats, ranges, and ecological niches. Ecology (from the Greek "oikus" which means house) is the study of the common home of all life - the earth.

Everything is becoming something else.

All plants and animals undergo evolutionary changes and adaptations. When things die, they are broken down, decomposed, recycled, and used by other living things.

Every living thing eats and is eaten by something else.

Three categories of life forms are in the basic food cycle of life: producers, consumers, and decomposers.

Everything depends on something else.

Interaction and interdependence occur among living and nonliving things and their environment. A change in one strand of the food cycle of life affects the entire web. Nothing exists in isolation.

There are basic necessities for life.

Food, water, shelter, and space are the basic necessities for life. These necessities are found in the atmosphere (air), the hydrosphere (water), and the earth's crust (soil). The biosphere is the thin skin of the planet where these zones collectively support life on earth.

Diversity is essential for life.

Many similarities and differences occur among living and nonliving things. This variation is essential for maintaining a healthy community and ensuring that plants and animals survive and reproduce in spite of changing situations.

Humans are capable of changing the balance of nature.

We are rational, thinking beings that have changed and continue to alter the environment of the earth in many profound ways. As such, we have a responsibility to all living things.

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Guidelines for Refuge Field Trips

• Take away only memories.
• Replace what you pick up.
• Walk and talk quietly.
• Stay with your group.
• Be aware of trash.
• Help protect wildlife.
• Enjoy yourselves!