Cibola National Wildlife Refuge is a U.S. National Wildlife Refuge in the floodplain of the lower Colorado River between Arizona and California and surrounded by a fringe of desert ridges and washes. The refuge encompasses both the historic Colorado River channel as well as a channelized portion constructed in the late 1960s. Along with these main waterbodies, several important backwaters are home to many wildlife species that reside in this Yuma Desert portion of the Sonoran Desert. Because of the river's life-sustaining water, wildlife here survive in an environment that reaches in the summer and receives an average of only of rain per year.