Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge is a 23,000-acre (93 km2) region of fresh and brackish marshes located within the city limits of New Orleans.

Most of the refuge is inside massive hurricane protection levees, built to hold back storm surges and maintain water levels in the low-lying city.

This is because the present-day refuge was for decades slated as the site for an enormous, master-planned community named, in various iterations, "Pontchartrain", "Orlandia" and "New Orleans East".

The refuge contains a variety of different habitats, including freshwater and brackish marshes, bottomland hardwood forests, lagoons, canals, borrow pits, chenieres (former beach fronts) and natural bayous.

Other wildlife include waterfowl, wading birds, shorebirds, marsh rabbits, white pelicans, alligators, and other raptors, game and small mammals, reptiles and amphibians.