Located along the Rio Grande in southern central New Mexico, the Refuge protects more than 57,000 acres of marsh, grassland, and wilderness habitat. Two-thirds of earth’s greater sandhill cranes find winter homes along the Bosque, following a migration that has endured for perhaps sixty million years. Sharing their winter company are some 60,000 snow geese, tens of thousands of ducks, visiting shorebirds, and resident birds, mammals, reptiles, and insects. A bosque refers to the flooded lands along southwestern rivers and derives from the Spanish word for woodlands.