| Little River National Wildlife Refuge | |
|---|---|
IUCN category IV (habitat/species management area) | |
 | |
  Map of the United States | |
| Location | McCurtain County, Oklahoma, United States |
| Nearest city | Idabel, Oklahoma |
| Coordinates | 33°56′47″N94°46′21″W / 33.94639°N 94.77250°W Coordinates: 33°56′47″N94°46′21″W / 33.94639°N 94.77250°W |
| Area | 15,000 acres (61 km2) |
| Established | 1987 |
| Governing body | U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service |
| Website | Little River National Wildlife Refuge |
The Little River National Wildlife Refuge is a National Wildlife Refuge of the United States located in Oklahoma. It covers 15,000 acres (61 km2) of forests and wetlands.
National Wildlife RefugeSystem is a designation for certain protected areas of the United States managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. The National Wildlife Refuge System is the system of public lands and waters set aside to conserve America's fish, wildlife, and plants. Since President Theodore Roosevelt designated Florida's Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge as the first wildlife refuge in 1903, the system has grown to over 562 national wildlife refuges and 38 wetland management districts encompassing more than 150,000,000 acres (607,028 km2).
The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country comprising 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Oklahoma is a state in the South Central region of the United States, bordered by Kansas on the north, Missouri on the northeast, Arkansas on the east, Texas on the south, New Mexico on the west, and Colorado on the northwest. It is the 20th-most extensive and the 28th-most populous of the fifty United States. The state's name is derived from the Choctaw words okla and humma, meaning "red people". It is also known informally by its nickname, "The Sooner State", in reference to the non-Native settlers who staked their claims on land before the official opening date of lands in the western Oklahoma Territory or before the Indian Appropriations Act of 1889, which dramatically increased European-American settlement in the eastern Indian Territory. Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory were merged into the State of Oklahoma when it became the 46th state to enter the union on November 16, 1907. Its residents are known as Oklahomans, and its capital and largest city is Oklahoma City.
The refuge contains most of the remaining bottomland hardwood communities in the southeastern part of the state. It is characterized by low, wet oak and hickory forest with oxbows and sloughs. Trees of the landscape include hickory, willow oak, sweetgum, cypress, white oak, loblolly pine, and walnut.
Hardwood is wood from dicot trees. These are usually found in broad-leaved temperate and tropical forests. In temperate and boreal latitudes they are mostly deciduous, but in tropics and subtropics mostly evergreen. Hardwood contrasts with softwood.
An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus Quercus of the beech family, Fagaceae. There are approximately 600 extant species of oaks. The common name "oak" also appears in the names of species in related genera, notably Lithocarpus, as well as in those of unrelated species such as Grevillea robusta and the Casuarinaceae (she-oaks). The genus Quercus is native to the Northern Hemisphere, and includes deciduous and evergreen species extending from cool temperate to tropical latitudes in the Americas, Asia, Europe, and North Africa. North America contains the largest number of oak species, with approximately 90 occurring in the United States, while Mexico has 160 species of which 109 are endemic. The second greatest center of oak diversity is China, which contains approximately 100 species.
Hickory is a type of tree, comprising the genus Carya. The genus includes 17 to 19 species. Five or six species are native to China, Indochina, and India (Assam), as many as 12 are native to the United States, four are found in Mexico, and two to four are from Canada. A number of hickory species are used for products like edible nuts or wood.
