Delta National Wildlife Refuge is a forty-eight-thousand-acre protected wetland in southeastern Louisiana, east of Venice along the Mississippi River, occupying a young and shifting delta of marshes, waterways, mudflats, and passes near the Gulf. Formed after an 1862 breach in the river’s natural levee spread sediment outward, the area was purchased by the federal government in 1935 mainly to protect wintering waterfowl. It remains a major sanctuary for huge numbers of ducks, geese, shorebirds, wading birds, songbirds, and raptors, while its fresh and brackish marshes also support fish, shellfish, deer, rabbits, nutria, alligators, brown pelicans, and other species despite repeated storm and oil damage.