Paul Kroegel (January 9, 1864 – 1948) was a German immigrant to the United States who helped establish Pelican Island as a bird sanctuary in Florida.

He arrived in Sebastian, Florida in 1881 and homesteaded with his brother, Arthur, and their father Gottlieb Kroegel, on a shell midden on the west bank of the Indian River Lagoon overlooking Pelican Island.

The island consisted of a five-acres of mangrove where thousands of brown pelicans and other water birds would roost and nest.

Kroegel was one of four wardens hired by the Florida Audubon Society to protect water birds from market hunters.

[2] Additional protections were granted by president Theodore Roosevelt who signed an executive order on 14 March 1903, establishing Pelican Island as the first federal bird reservation, part of a network of 55 bird reservation and national game preserved for wildlife that were forerunners to the national wildlife refuge system.