What is the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge?
The refuge is staffed Sunday through Saturday 7:30 am to 4:00 pm, while the refuge itself is open sunrise to sunset every day.

Join staff naturalists at Necedah National Wildlife Refuge Nature’s Discovery Area and Trading Post to explore nature seven days a week from 8 am – 3:30 pm in the refuge’s Ellen Allen Classroom located adjacent to the refuge office.

Visitors can experience nature through fun, hands-on activities both outdoors and indoors. Ask staff naturalists questions, pick up self guided activities to do on the refuge, participate in public programs, family activities and crafts. Topics include animal tracking, wildflowers, insects, fishing, digital photography, fire ecology, bird hikes and much more. If you have a picture or an item of something you have found in nature, bring it to the trading post to share your story about it. Trade in your item for a new item to take home with you, figure out what it is, return and trade again and again. Exciting rewards await participants! No reservations required.

The Necedah National Wildlife Refuge is nestled in a landscape that was epitomized by early homesteaders as the Great Wisconsin Swamp.  A mosaic habitat of sedge meadow, savanna, and pine-oak forest established in 1939 the area is an island of refuge—home to ringed-bog-hunter dragonflies, whooping cranes, trumpeter swans, wolves, Karner blue butterflies, badgers, and red-headed woodpeckers. Each species and habitat is monitored and maintained by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to ensure overall vigor within the 44,000-acre ecosystem.

Located four miles west of the Village of Necedah off of Hwy 21, the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge provides a range of unique opportunities for people to enjoy and learn about the natural world through hiking, wildlife watching, cross-country skiing, horseback and ATV riding, hunting, fishing, photography, berry picking, birding and various educational events. Three established trails wind through various habitat types on the refuge, several observation decks, and refuge roads are open for use from sunrise to sundown to allow visitors an opportunity to see wildlife. Beavers, porcupines, white-tailed deer, foxes or the occasional black bear and timber wolf are sometimes spotted. 

Necedah National Wildlife Refuge is home to many rare species.  It boosts one of the world’s largest populations of endangered Karner blue butterflies. Additionally the refuge is the reintroduction site for an experimental population of whooping cranes.  An annual Celebration, The Necedah Whooping Crane & Wildlife Festival, highlights the Whooping Cranes and the important work done at the refuge.

The whooping crane success story began in 2001 when eight chicks conditioned to follow their ultralight surrogate parents began their first fall migration south from the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in October. Seven of the whoopers safely made it to Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge in Florida and five successfully completed an unassisted return migration back to central Wisconsin in the spring of 2002.

That same year, biologists and pilots at the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge conditioned a second group and guided 17 juvenile cranes south. One was lost during migration when it collided with an ultralight but the survivors returned north in the spring of 2003. Also during 2003, another 'class' of chicks were hatched and brought to Necedah Refuge. This third class learned to fly longer and sooner than any of the previous classes and headed south in October of 2003. The story will repeat itself for several more years until a successful breeding flock is established east of the Mississippi River.

To ensure the impressionable cranes remain wild, project biologists and pilots adhere to a strict no-talking rule, broadcast recorded crane calls and wear costumes designed to mask the human form whenever they are around the cranes. Residents in the seven-state, Wisconsin to Florida flyway, should keep their eyes on the sky in the fall for the telltale white forms of whooping cranes gliding on the wind.

Whooping cranes, named for their loud and penetrating unison calls, live and breed in wetland areas where they feed on crabs, clams, frogs and aquatic plants. A whooping crane is a distinctive animal, standing 5 feet tall with a white body, black wing tips and a red crest on its head. Look for the birds from the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge observation tower in the summer and early fall.

To follow their migration south and for more information on cranes and the project, visit any of these websites:

Explore the WILD side of Juneau County by visiting the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge, 4 miles west of Necedah on Hwy 21 (look for Headquarters Road).