Hog Island Wildlife Management Area Trails

To reach the main tract of Hog Island Wildlife Management Area (WMA), you must first pass through a perfunctory security screening at Dominion Power’s Surry Nuclear Power Station. However, once inside, you’re surrounded by tidewater marsh teeming with wildlife, and the civilized world seems miles and miles away. The Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries manages Hog Island Wildlife Management Area primarily for the benefit of migratory waterfowl, though a host of birds and other animals benefit from the managed habitat and resultant hunting restrictions. Even fishing is limited to the James River along the western shore of the peninsula. That’s correct: Hog Island is an island no more. Construction of earthen levees (atop which you will enter and hike through the WMA) linked Hog Island to the peninsula known as Gravel Neck. No longer truly tidal, the marshes within the WMA are now filled and drained through dikes. This allows the VDGIF staff to create optimum conditions for specific species.