Talk:Big Island National Wildlife Refuge Complex

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Merge?

Big Island National Wildlife Refuge Complex seems like another name for this combination of two units? At first I thought to merge to the "Big Island" one, but majority of sources seem to just use the "Hakalau" name and call the the Kona part a "unit". So now I would mildly favor just redirecting that to this article, with one sentence talking about how they are administered together as the "Complex". W Nowicki (talk) 23:24, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The Big Island National Wildlife Refuge Complex is a top-level, USFWS designation for two different refuges: Hakalau Forest and Kona Forest. Why would we want to merge this into an article on Hakalau? In fact, the opposite is the case. House style is to merge the two units into this article, such as we see with Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge Complex, San Luis National Wildlife Refuge Complex, Audubon National Wildlife Refuge Complex, etc. We never merge whole into parts, always parts into whole, if needed. Right now, there is nothing to merge so I'm going to restore the top-level article and add a summary style section on the Hakalau Forest Unit (with a link to the main, split article) and a new section on the Kona Forest Unit. Viriditas (talk) 03:25, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) consists of the Hakalau Forest Unit and the Kona Forest Unit (Map 1) collectively managed as the Big Island National Wildlife Refuge Complex (BINWRC)...On the Island of Hawiʻi, there are presently two Watershed Partnerships in the vicinity of Refuge System lands. The Big Island National Wildlife Refuge Complex (BINWRC) participates in both of these groups..."[1] (August 2010)

The Big Island complex is also part of a larger complex in the hierarchy:

The Big Island NWR Complex, Kaui NWR Complex, Maui NWR Complex, Oahu NWR Complex, and Pacific Remote Islands NWR Complex are sub-complexes of the Hawaiian and Pacific Islands NWR Complex.[2]

According to the USFWS, only states in region 3 did not group multiple refuges into complexes.[3] Hawaii is in region 1.[4] Regarding the Big Island National Wildlife Refuge Complex, a USFWS reports states:

Two complexes include only one refuge but are considered complexes because they have two units that they manage. Specifically the Big Island NWR in Hawaii includes the Hakalau Forest NWR as well as the Kona Forest NWR, which is considered a unit of Hakalau Forest NWR. The Arkansas/Matagorda Island National Wildlife Refuge Complex in Texas is the other example.[5]

The listing for the complex can be found here. Viriditas (talk) 04:34, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]