Marais des Cygnes National Wildlife Refuge

Marais des Cygnes National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) is located 39 miles south of the Kansas City metropolitan area. The 7,500-acre Refuge was established in 1992 to protect one of the most northwestern areas of bottomland hardwood forest in the United States as well as the largest contiguous tract of bottomland hardwood forest in Kansas. The Refuge offers visitors the chance to view bottomland hardwood forest and tallgrass prairie. Both of these plant communities are rare in North America today. Bottomland hardwood forest has been reduced by 80 percent nationally since Euro-American settlement, and tallgrass prairie has been reduced by 99 percent.