The National Key Deer Refuge was established in 1957 to protect and preserve Key deer and other wildlife resources in the Florida Keys. The refuge is located in the lower Florida Keys and currently consists of approximately 9,200 acres of land that includes pine rockland forests, tropical hardwood hammocks, freshwater wetlands, salt marsh wetlands, and mangrove forests. These natural communities are critical habitat for hundreds of endemic and migratory species including 17 federally-listed species such as Key deer, lower Keys marsh rabbit, and silver rice rat.

Photo: Chad Anderson 

As part of President Obama’s initiative to fuel the economy and create jobs by promoting travel and tourism, the administration today announced a new design, improved navigation tools and expanded content for Recreation.Gov, the interagency website that guides visitors to 90,000 sites on federal lands such as national parks, wildlife refuges, waterways, forests and recreation areas.

The redesign of www.recreation.gov is an initial step in a multi-year strategy to engage visitors with enhanced interactive content and more multimedia, mobile, trip-planning tools. The seven million visitors who use the web site every year will be able to make reservations, see ready-made itineraries for destination cities, and search for activities on an interactive map.

We put together this short video to show all the amazing places you can visit through www.recreation.gov. 

Olympic National Park is a collection of very diverse landscapes such as mountains, beaches, and forests. It has also been home to many different groups of people for generations, starting with the hunter-gatherers 10,000 years ago up to today. The Park is currently home to multiple American Indian tribes such as the Hoh, the Makah, and the Quileute. These tribes work together with the National Park Service to preserve the cultural history of the park and its resources. A landmark case in 1974 gave local tribes the right to fish in the park. However, due to the dwindling of fish levels in the area, both the tribes and the park are devoted to protecting these fish communities.

Photo: National Park Service