Law Enforcement

While the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has primary responsibility for law enforcement activities on National Wildlife Refuges, Service agents frequently assist state fish and wildlife agencies in the enforcement of waterfowl hunting regulations elsewhere, where the states take the lead. Wildlife management in the United States is very much a shared responsibility among Federal, state, and local wildlife agencies and with private sector-partners and other managers of large tracts of habitat, like the military and America’s farmers. America’s National Wildlife Refuges are the largest system of public lands managed specifically for animals and plants in the world, yet they are only one part of a much more complex fabric of land management activities in the United States that sustain fish and wildlife. In this 1950’s-era photo, U.S. game management agent Claude Ruiter assists a State of Maryland game warden when checking a duck hunter, location and date unknown.