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Description:
Prime Hook NWR is located 22 miles southeast of Dover, Delaware, near the western shore of Delaware Bay. The refuge was established to conserve an important segment of the Delaware Bay marshes, to protect migrating and wintering waterfowl habitat. The refuge is considered to have one of the best existing wetland habitat areas along the Atlantic Coast.The refuge's integrated wetland management approach increases the carrying-capacity of its marshes by annually producing a wide variety of food resources and habitat cover-types to maximize the spectrum of wetland-dependent species that can be accommodated consistently year after year on a relatively small wetland land-base. The intensively managed freshwater impoundments have become important stop-over sites for spring and fall migrating shorebirds and wading birds. Endangered and threatened species management activities provide habitat for the Delmarva fox squirrel, nesting bald eagles and migrating peregrine falcons. Neotropical land birds passing through utilize the refuge's 890 acres of upland forested habitat during the fall and spring.The refuge's over-all diverse landscape of various cover-types which include freshwater and salt marshes, woodlands, grasslands, scrub-brush habitats, ponds, bottomland forested areas connected to a 7-mile long creek and agricultural lands provide habitat for approximately 267 species of birds, 35 species of reptiles and amphibians and 36 different mammals.
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