Tallahatchie National Wildlife Refuge - Visit Grenada
Tallahatchie National Wildlife Refuge

Tallahatchie National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1991 and consists of 4,199 acres in Grenada and Tallahatchie Counties. Like many areas in the Mississippi Delta, the lands which form Tallahatchie NWR are relatively flat and have been extensively cleared and drained for agriculture. Since these lands were acquired by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 1,300 acres have been removed from agricultural production and reforested with native hardwood species. Today, the refuge’s largest unit is a patchwork of old fields and small scattered hardwood bottomland forests bisected  by the meandering Tippo Bayou.

The old oxbows and low-lying fields along Tippo Bayou flood each winter and hold large concentrations of waterfowl, including mallards, northern shovelers, blue-winged and green-winged teal, and northern pintails. Wood ducks abound here and the unit has a very healthy deer herd. Peregrine falcon, bald eagles, merlin, least tern, barred owls, great-horned owls, loggerhead shrikes, and red-tailed hawks, great blue herons, earstern meadowlarks, northern flickers, pied-billed grebes, and loggerhead shrikes are common year-round residents. Summer visitors include indigo buntings, blue grosbeaks, dickcissels, white ibis, and prothonotary warblers. Although less common wood storks and black-bellied whistling ducks are some unique summer visitors. The refuge is complemented on the south by the 9,483-acre Malmaison Wildlife Management Area, managed by the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks.

Tallahatchie National Wildlife Refuge is located on the north and south sides of Highway 8, nine miles west of Holcomb, MS.  Please note that gated roads are open from mid-September through May 1.

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