Cat Island National Wildlife Refuge
Community spots & sessions in LA · on LutherHeggs
Cat Island is located near the town of St. Francisville, Louisiana, 30 miles north of Baton Rouge. The refuge was established to conserve, restore, and manage native forested wetland habitats for migratory birds, aquatic resources and endangered and threatened plants and animals. The refuge lies at the southern end of Cat Island, which is not actually an island but rather a strip of low-lying land between the Mississippi River's current channel and the escarpment the river cut along the Tunica Hills as it meandered over time. Cat Island National Wildlife Refuge was established in 2000 as the 526th refuge in the National Wildlife Refuge System. The refuge is periodically flooded by the Mississippi, and may remain flooded for several months of the year, with flooding typically starting in December and ending by June. The refuge’s sloughs and ponds, bottomland hardwood forests, and cypress-tupelo swamps offer abundant food resources for wading birds, a stopover for migratory waterfowl, and habitat for deer and many other native species. The Tunica and Choctaw people have historic connections with the landscape and still live in Louisiana today.