Waubay National Wildlife Refuge, established in 1935 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in response to record low waterfowl numbers during a great drought, transformed a former hunting camp into a refuge for waterfowl and other migratory birds. Its name comes from the Lakota Sioux word "wa-bay," meaning "a place where numbers of birds make their nests." Covering 4,650 acres of marsh, prairie, and forest habitat, it attracts 245 bird species, with more than 100 nesting there. Located in the Central Flyway, it includes prairie pothole habitat marked by numerous wetlands ranging from large lakes to small puddles, whose extreme wet and dry cycles increase wildlife productivity. The refuge also preserves a rare view of eastern deciduous forest surrounded by open prairie, with bur oak dominant alongside basswood, American elm, wild grape, jack-in-the-pulpit, and Dutchman's breeches. European settlement had cut most of the area's woods for fuel and fenceposts and plowed many native grasslands for cropland and homesteads, but much of the refuge's former farmland has been restored to grasses or native plantings that support nesting waterfowl and other grassland-dependent species such as western meadowlarks, savannah sparrows, and bobolinks.