Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon’s Harney Basin protects one of the western United States’ largest freshwater marsh ecosystems, with marshes, open water, grassland, sagebrush, and rimrock supporting hundreds of thousands of birds along the Pacific Flyway. Created in 1908 after plume hunting devastated bird populations, it grew from the original Malheur Lake Refuge into a vast protected landscape. The area also holds a much deeper human history as a seasonal homeland of Paiute communities, later disrupted by settler expansion, reservation reduction, and forced removal after the Bannock War. Its enduring importance lies in the close connection of wildlife habitat, geology, and Indigenous and settler history.