Audubon Guide to the National Wildlife Refuges: Southeast: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Tennessee, US Virgin Islands

The Okefenokee Swamp is probably best known, outside of the Deep South, as that place with a funny name where Pogo Possum and his cartoon cohorts lived. Local wildlife aficionados, however, will tell you that 438,000 acres of the swamp are protected as a federal wildlife refuge, within which alligators, bobcats, black bears, and snapping turtles thrive. The Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge is one of more than three dozen such reserves in the southeastern United States (a region that, for the purposes of this book, includes the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico), most of them open to the public. Author Doris Gove, a zoologist and naturalist, provides useful information on each of them in this guidebook, which suggests driving and hiking tours, points out characteristic flora and fauna, and tells of the history of these often pristine habitats. --Gregory McNamee