The State - News from Dec. 8, 1986

The National Audubon Society bought 780-acre Christmann Island on the floodplain of the San Joaquin River near its confluence with Tuolomne River, about 25 miles from the San Joaquin River Delta, as the nucleus of a new national wildlife refuge. The island, described as a “bird paradise,” is intended as the centerpiece of the first national wildlife habitat in Stanislaus County, Audubon officials said in Modesto. Society officials said Christmann will become an integral part of the Pacific Flyway, the aerial roadway for almost nine million North American migrating waterfowl whose natural environment has been drastically reduced by urbanization and pollution. Among the birds who winter there are the endangered Aleutian Canada goose and the threatened sandhill crane.