Step into a rare tropical world at Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge. Spanish moss drips from trees. Noisy chachalacas welcome the morning dawn. A malachite butterfly flits from the shadows. The wildlife clientele is truly international here along the most southern stretch of the Rio Grande.

Thanks to the foresight of those who succeeded in protecting the refuge in 1943, we can experience a natural world that has vanished from 95 percent of the Lower Rio Grande Valley. Santa Ana NWR gleams like an inviting island in a sea of cleared and altered lands.

The designation of Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge in 1979 set the wheels in motion for connecting the natural pieces left along the last 275 miles of the Rio Grande's journey.