Wanaket Wildlife Refuge

The Wanaket Wildlife Area, formerly the privately owned Broken Arrow Ranch, is located 25 miles northwest of Pendleton in eastern Oregon. Wanaket means “beginning of water” in the Umatilla language, and the land is a prime example of Columbia Plateau habitat, important for many plant and animal species in the Columbia River basin.

Golden eagles, burrowing owls, and long-billed curlews frequent the area’s diverse landscape of pothole wetlands and shrub steppe. Upland game species and edible plants have made the area an important hunting and gathering site for generations of Native people.

Trust for Public Land acquired the property at the urging of Antone Minthorn—longtime chair of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation’s board of trustees; Minthorn also championed funding for the project. The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation now manage Wanaket Wildlife Area.

Always crucial for wildlife, this habitat became even more important after the 1930s, when thousands of acres of similar habitat were inundated behind dams on the Columbia River. The creation of this wildlife area was an early example of conserving land with federal funds to mitigate habitat loss—a model that has proved very successful in the years since.