Jennifer Outcalt (Veery) took a Cartography class at Northern Illinois University to learn more about creating maps. She was required to do an independent mapping project and chose a topic that would promote the use of Duck Stamps. The basic idea/question for the project turned out to be: Where does the money come from and where are the refuges located?
Buying a Duck Stamp is just like buying a small piece of land for the birds. 98 cents of EVERY dollar goes DIRECTLY to the purchase of land. There is not an easier way to help the birds!!
The Duck Stamp sales information came from Paul Baicich: writer, editor, and independent consultant on birding and bird conservation. Paul Baicich also sends out the Birding Community E-bulletin, an e-bulletin dedicated to promoting birding and habitat protection.
The Final Map
Download the Duck Stamp Map (PDF 2.15 MB)
Using Adobe Illustrator, Jennifer took base maps from U.S. Department of the Interior and U.S. Geological Survey’s National Atlas of the United States of America, 2003 and from the U.S. Department of the Interior and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Wildlife Refuge System 2008 and digitized the lower 48 states and the locations of all of the current wildlife refuges. She created a table that included the money spent by each state in 2001-02 and then figured out how much refuge land (in acres) each state had. The created a one-year snapshot of Duck Stamp money spent, refuge area and refuge location.
This project would be great to expand upon, using more information on where new refuges are going and to average out the money spent over the years based on population. This is something we at Birdfreak hope to continue working on as we learn more about mapping.
Way to go, Jennifer! What a great project. I sure hope you got kudos from your instructor.