Deer Flat National Wildlife Refuge

Deer Flat National Wildlife Refuge (11,388 acres) lies just outside the city of Nampa, surrounding the waters of Lake Lowell. This is a perfect resting place for migrating birds along the Pacific Flyway, including some pretty large concentrations of Canada geese and mallard ducks. The American Bird Conservancy has named Deer Flat NWR a "Globally Important Bird Area." Deer Flat NWR was established by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1909.

Deer Flat NWR is broken into two sections. One section is a serious of non-contiguous locations (101 islands of riparian forests and grasslands containing about 800 acres) strung out for about 113 miles along the Snake River in Owyhee, Canyon, Washington and Payette counties in Idaho and Baker and Malheur counties in Oregon. The second (and main) section of Deer Flat NWR is the sagebrush uplands and edge wetlands that surround the open water of Lake Lowell. There is a visitor center located at the 10,588-acre Lake Lowell site (the lake itself is almost 9,000 acres in size).

Deer Flat got its name back in the days of the early settlers. This was a low-lying area with several flowing springs that fed some pretty thick grasses. In the winter, herds of deer and elk came into the area for that easily gotten food. Folks saw that and dubbed the area "Deer Flat." Lake Lowell is an impoundment of Boise River water created by the Bureau of Reclamation (it's not a dam-created lake but an off-stream impoundment fed by the New York Canal). The lake is managed to provide irrigation water for the surrounding farm lands, so it draws down slowly in the spring and summer and refills every winter. That spring and summer change in the shoreline exposes mudflats that offer some great nesting habitat for shorebirds.

The upstream islands in the Snake River section of the Deer Flat National Wildlife Refuge have sagebrush and grass centers ringed with willows and similar riparian vegetation. The downstream islands have grassy centers with a heavier ring of vegetation: trees like cottonwood, willows and Russian olives. The islands tend to be between 4 and 10 feet above the river's flow level and are used often for nesting by Canada geese, although some of these islands have heron rookeries and colonies of gulls on them.