At the mouth of Maryland’s Susquehanna River, where it meets the Upper Chesapeake Bay, Susquehanna River National Wildlife Refuge survives today as Battery Island, a 3.79-acre remnant managed through Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. The island had earlier use in the nineteen twenties as a fish hatchery. In the early nineteen forties, federal action protected 13,363 acres of the Susquehanna Flats, whose rich aquatic vegetation supported enormous numbers of ducks and other waterfowl, making it one of the bay’s great feeding grounds. Environmental changes in the nineteen sixties, compounded by Hurricane Agnes in 1972, destroyed habitat and sharply reduced bird populations. In 1978, protections over the surrounding waters ended, leaving only Battery Island in the refuge system.