CARTERET COUNTY — The North Carolina Coastal Federation is in the final stage of restoring the North River Wetlands Preserve, one of the largest wetland restoration projects in the state.
The preserve will be closed to the public during the final 2,100 acres of wetland restoration, which will begin this month and continue through the end of the summer.
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Work on the site will involve building earthen dikes to hold water on the land as well as the creation of different habitats such as mudflats, open water, emergent wetlands and forested wetlands. Updates on the preserve’s progress will be shared on the federation’s social media accounts.
“Restoring the natural hydrology will result in the reduction of millions of gallons of water entering the adjacent water bodies,” according to the release.
Since 1999, the federation has been working to restore the 6,000-acre site from farmland to its original state, forested and tidal wetlands, with the goal to improve the water quality of degraded downstream estuaries and reopen these waters for shellfishing.
The restoration project is being funded by the United States Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). It is part of an agreement with NRCS to complete 8,000 acres of wetland restoration across the Coastal Plain over the next three years.
For more information regarding the North River Wetlands Preserve restoration project, contact Bree Charron at breet@nccoast.org or 252-393-8185.
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