Grand Cote National Wildlife Refuge is a 6,000-acre refuge in Avoyelles Parish near Marksville, Louisiana, established in 1989 under the North American Waterfowl Management Plan. Set in the lower Mississippi floodplain on land once covered by bottomland hardwood forest, it contains a depressional basin that fills with shallow water from winter rains and backwater flooding, creating important seasonal wetland habitat. Although the area was cleared and leveed for agriculture in the 1970s, it proved better suited to wildlife management. Today it is managed primarily for migratory and resident birds, with special emphasis on flooded rice, moist-soil plants, and other habitats along the Mississippi flyway.