Reprinted from the Ocracoke Observer

Waterfowl memories are woven throughout Ocracoke native Eddie O’Neal’s life.

He recalls redheads, pintails, teal and great flocks of geese on the Pamlico Sound and winter days in sink boxes with old-timers like Thurston Gaskill.

Because of that history and his skill of turning a block of wood into a work of art, he was named featured carver for this year’s Ocracoke Island Waterfowl Festival from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Friday, and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday in the Ocracoke School gym.

O’Neal chose the Canada goose as his signature piece, honoring both the bird and the generations of island hunters and carvers who came before him.

“A Canada goose was a real trophy back then,” he said. “Something you showed off with pride and often shared with older neighbors who couldn’t get out to hunt themselves.”

O’Neal graduated from Ocracoke School in 1978 alongside classmates Vince O’Neal and the late John Simpson, two of the founders of the Ocracoke Decoy Carver’s Guild in 2018.

As a boy, O’Neal was constantly on the water.

Like many island youth, by age 12 he was already hunting and fishing around Springer’s Point and on his father’s nearby property.

He fished commercially with his father, Carson, who served in the Coast Guard, and brothers Andy and Albert, working pound nets and gigging flounder.

During his 23 years working for the state of North Carolina, he held a variety of positions: on a dredge crew, building spillways and working heavy equipment from Southport to Knotts Island.

Included in his working career, he also built golf courses, was a truck driver and worked on road paving crews for an asphalt company out of Norfolk, Virginia.

He and his wife Pam also ran the Island Galley restaurant on Ocracoke until damage from Hurricane Isabel (2003) forced them to close.

Although he appreciated decoys, he didn’t start carving as a hobby until around 2008 while living in Virginia Beach. Over time, that hobby “morphed into a full-time job.”

Among his fond memories are watching Wilbur and Clinton Gaskill, older Ocracoke carvers, who turned out small geese flyers and decoys at an astonishing pace. Wilbur could make 15 to 20 decoys a day and sell every one of them on a summer day when the island was far quieter than it is now.

His second cousin, Dave O’Neal, a retired Coast Guard man and renowned carver, has been an important influence offering tips on the techniques and tools of the craft.

Preferring to focus on his own carvings, O’Neal doesn’t collect or trade in other people’s decoys.

When he and Pam retired several years ago, they moved back to Ocracoke, and his carving became a daily practice.

Today, O’Neal does most of his carvings for the Island Ragpicker shop, run by his siblings Stephanie and Albert.

Not just decoys — he crafts shore birds, small flyers, fish, and a variety of decorative pieces that keep the shelves full and his hands busy.

Carving is his “therapy room” — something that keeps him grounded in retirement and balances time with his grandchildren Carter, Kyler, Amaya, Johnny and Angel.

He rarely sells pieces directly, except at some island events.

He prefers to stock the shop or donate carvings to local fundraisers like the Ocracoke Firemen’s Ball auction where his works have helped raise significant financial support over the years.

For materials, O’Neal favors northern white cedar, which he hauls back from a sawmill near Egg Harbor, New Jersey.

He also uses tupelo, sourced from a Mennonite mill near Pink Hill, and some pine.

Large decoys are almost always cedar, while smaller items, like flyers, often come from scrap wood he picks up from around the island, such as from the school that was torn down.

He appreciates cedar’s similarity to local juniper and its fine, aromatic grain. O’Neal shapes his birds with an angle grinder for the rough form, then refines them with a Dremel and extensive sanding, especially on the delicate heads and bills of shore birds.

He draws most of his own patterns by hand and also enjoys building furniture, having made tables and household pieces for family members from barn oak and other reclaimed woods.

This story is provided courtesy of the Ocracoke Observer, a newspaper covering Ocracoke Island. Coastal Review partners with the Ocracoke Observer to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest along our coast.

Millions will be awarded to broadband providers across rural North Carolina to connect homes, businesses, and community anchor institutions to high-speed internet access.

The governor’s office announced last week that $26 million will go to bring 5,161 rural homes, businesses and community anchor institutions in 66 counties access to high-speed internet infrastructure by the end of the year through the Stop-Gap Solutions program.

A part of the North Carolina Department of Information Technology’s Division of Broadband and Digital Opportunity, the program administers funding from the federal American Rescue Plan Act to coverage gaps in internet access. This is done by targeting broadband line extensions to reach individuals and small pockets of homes and businesses in hard-to-reach areas.

“These broadband projects will ensure more families can soon access telehealth, students can complete their homework, businesses can compete in larger markets, and communities can thrive,” Gov. Josh Stein said in the release. “I am committed to improving broadband access across the state and making sure no community is left behind.”

On the coast, FOCUS Broadband, also known as Atlantic Telephone Membership Cooperative, has been selected to receive $1.65 million to connect 145 locations in Duplin and Pender counties.

Connect Holding II, LLC, doing business as Brightspeed, will be awarded $1.68 million to connect 2,439 locations in Beaufort, Camden, Carteret, Craven, Currituck, Hertford, Hyde, Onslow, Pamlico, Pasquotank, Tyrrell and Washington counties on the coast. Other counties to benefit from this award are Alamance, Bladen, Caldwell, Caswell, Chatham, Columbus, Cumberland, Edgecombe, Franklin, Greene, Halifax, Harnett, Hoke, Johnston, Jones, Martin, Montgomery, Moore, Nash, Northampton, Orange, Person, Pitt, Randolph, Rockingham, Sampson, Stokes, Surry, Vance, Wake, Warren, Wayne and Wilson counties.

HarvestBeam Inc., a broadband provider for rural North Carolina, will receive $413,260 for 95 locations in Craven and Pitt counties.

Roanoke Connect Holdings, operating as Fybe internet provider, will be awarded $2.4 million to connect 826 locations in Bertie, Chowan, Gates, Granville, Halifax, Hertford, Martin, and Northampton counties. 

Wilkes & RiverStreet Networks has been selected to receive $959,828 to connect 306 locations in Camden, Currituck, Stokes and Wilkes counties.

Other providers to be awarded serve customers in Alexander, Bladen, Buncombe, Durham, Henderson, Hoke, Iredell, Forsyth, Jackson, Macon, Orange, Robeson, Rowan, Sampson, Scotland, Swain, Transylvania and Yadkin counites.

“High-speed internet access is the foundation for health care delivery, public safety operations, workforce development, and economic growth in our state,” Teena Piccione, NCDIT secretary and state chief information officer, said. “This program allows us to move with urgency and precision to connect more North Carolinians.”

A public hearing on three proposed shellfish bottom and water column leases in Hyde County is scheduled for 6 p.m. Wednesday, March 18.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Marine Fisheries Shellfish Lease and Aquaculture Program is holding the hearing at the Hyde County Courthouse in Swan Quarter and online using Webex.

The hearing will cover the following proposed shellfish lease applications:

• Good Time Charlie’s Fisheries LLC, Mary E. Van Salisbury, has applied for a 2.12-acre shellfish bottom and water column lease in Back Creek.
• Angel’s Breath Oyster Co. LLC, Michael L. D’Amelio, has applied for a 4.04-acre shellfish bottom and water column lease in Rose Bay.
• Oasis Oyster Co. LLC, Maxwell A. D’Amelio, has applied for a 4.09-acre shellfish bottom and water column lease in Rose Bay.

Proposed lease areas will be marked at each corner as a proposed shellfish bottom lease and/or water column lease with the identifying numbers listed above.

Public hearing information, including the web conference link, call-in phone number, presentation slides and biological investigation reports, are online at deq.nc.gov/2026-03-18-hyde-county-shellfish-lease-hearing.

The public may comment on the proposed shellfish leases in person at the hearing or via Webex. Those wishing to speak via Webex should register before the hearing at deq.nc.gov/hyde-county-shellfish-lease-hearing-speaker-registration. Those who wish to comment in person can register to speak at the meeting from 5-6 p.m. the night of the hearing.

The public can submit written comments on the proposed shellfish leases up to 24 hours after the hearings online at nc.gov/hyde-county-shellfish-lease-hearing-comment-form, or mail to NC Division of Marine Fisheries, Shellfish Lease and Aquaculture Program, P.O. Box 769, Morehead City, NC 28557.

For more information, contact the shellfish lease and aquaculture program at 252- 515-5600 or SLAP@deq.nc.gov.

Hatteras-Ocracoke, Cherry Branch-Minnesott Beach and Southport-Fort Fisher ferry routes will be on an adjusted schedule for the Christmas holiday.

All other state-run ferries will be on their regular schedules over the Christmas holidays, North Carolina Department of Transportation officials said Wednesday when the revised schedule was announced.

The routes will adhere to the following schedule:

Hatteras-Ocracoke Dec. 24-25

• From Hatteras: 5 a.m., 6 a.m., 8 a.m., 9 a.m., 11 a.m., noon, 2 p.m., 3 p.m., 6 p.m., 9 p.m., midnight.
• From Ocracoke: 4:30 a.m., 6:30 a.m., 7:30 a.m., 9:30 a.m., 10:30 a.m., 12:30 p.m., 1:30 p.m., 3:30 p.m., 4:30 p.m., 7:30 p.m., 10:30 p.m.

Cherry Branch-Minnesott Beach Dec. 25

• From Cherry Branch: 5 a.m., 5:45 a.m., 6:45 a.m., 7:45 a.m., 9 a.m., 10 a.m., 11 a.m., noon, 1:30 p.m., 2:30 p.m., 3:30 p.m., 4:30 p.m., 5:30 p.m., 6:30 p.m., 7:30 p.m., 8:30 p.m. and 10 p.m.
• From Minnesott Beach: 5:25 a.m., 6:15 a.m., 7:15 a.m., 8:30 a.m., 9:30 a.m., 10:30 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:30 p.m., 2 p.m., 3 p.m., 4 p.m., 5 p.m., 6 p.m., 7 p.m., 8 p.m., 9 p.m. and 11 p.m.

Southport-Fort Fisher Dec. 25

• From Southport: 5:30 a.m., 7 a.m., 8:30 a.m., 10 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 1 p.m., 2:30 p.m. and 4 p.m.
• From Fort Fisher: 6:15 a.m., 7:45 a.m., 9:15 a.m., 10:45 a.m., 12:15 p.m., 1:45 p.m., 3:15 p.m. and 4:45 p.m.

The Indian Woods historical marker at the intersection of St. Francis Road and U.S. Highway 17 in Bertie County is easily missed while cruising at 55 or 60 miles an hour.

Located at the edge of a farmer’s field after the fall harvest of cotton, the sign leans to the north, and hints of the story and its aftermath of an almost forgotten war between Native Americans and colonists in the early 18th century.

It is the northernmost of at least seven signs that are found throughout coastal North Carolina from Wayne County to Bertie County that trace the story of that conflict.

The Tuscarora War was brutal and horrific. Launching a coordinated attack on the morning of Sept. 22, 1711, Tuscarora warriors slaughtered 140 men, women and children throughout eastern North Carolina.

“The Tuscarora devastated white settlements in the Pamlico Neuse region and raised serious fears for the continuance of English occupation in North Carolina,” Thomas Parramore wrote for the North Carolina Historical Review in 1982.

Unable to defend its own people, the North Carolina colony’s general assembly begged Virginia and South Carolina for help.

Virginia refused to send troops, but put pressure on neutral Tuscarora villages in its colony to remain out of the conflict. South Carolina sent combined white and Native forces.

In the end in March of 1713, when the last pitched battle of the war was fought at Fort Neoheroka, which is present day Snow Hill in Greene County, at least a thousand Tuscarora were dead and another thousand sold into slavery in South Carolina.

In North Carolina, as many as 200 colonists were killed and the combined white and Native combatants provided by South Carolina suffered an additional 200 deaths.

Tuscarora lineage

The Tuscarora were part of the Iroquois, whose original lands stretched from New York state into Canada. The migration to North Carolina most likely occurred sometime around the 1500s, Dr. Arwin Smallwood, dean of the College of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at North Carolina Central University, told Coastal Review.

Smallwood, who traces his lineage to the Tuscarora people, grew up in Indian Woods and has studied the history of the Tuscarora extensively.

“In the 1500s they’d already moved down from (New York) and settled North Carolina,” he said, adding that “they never broke their blood ties to the five nations,” which are the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca.

By the 1580s, when Sir Walter Raleigh’s doomed expeditions landed on Roanoke Island, the Tuscarora were well established in eastern North Carolina and probably were the dominant Native nation of the region. They may have been the ones who decided the colony’s fate.

“Tuscarora oral traditions say they were the ones who destroyed the Lost Colony,” Smallwood said. “They always had large numbers of people who had European characteristics like red and auburn hair, even sometimes blonde hair, but definitely what (Native Americans) called the Tuscarora eye, which was blue-green, kind of a hazel eye, that was prevalent throughout the Tuscaroras and that distinguished them.”

War: Longtime complaints

At its simplest, the Tuscarora War was about long-established complaints of the Tuscarora: Encroachment on lands they had traditionally controlled and unfair and dishonest trading practices.

But, Smallwood noted, there were other factors at play.

It was “trade routes. The Tuscaroras controlled the Piedmont and the coastal plains of North Carolina. They controlled all the major trade routes between North Carolina and Virginia,” he said. “Anyone who needed knives, axes, guns, gunpowder, whatever they had to trade through them, including rum. They had to trade through the Tuscaroras. For the southeastern Indians, it was a way of eliminating them as the people who monopolized trade.”

It is possible that, after at least 60 years of observing the internal politics of the North Carolina colony, the Tuscarora were aware of the internal rivalries that were threatening to tear the colony apart, and that may have played a role in the timing of the initial attack.

Cary’s Rebellion pitted Thomas Cary, the Quaker-leaning former governor of the colony, against Edward Hyde, who the Lords Proprietors had selected to govern the colony. The rebellion exposed the deep political divisions within the colony that led to open warfare with Hyde finally taking the reins of the governorship in 1711.

At that time, the colony was divided into two counties: Albemarle in the north and Bath in the south. Although in 1711 the nominal capital of the colony was Bath. There was no government office there and it’s doubtful if the population of the town ever reached 300 people.

The northern Albemarle colony was dominated by the supporters of Hyde and the resentment from Cary’s attempt to wrest control of the colony permeated the region.

“The Cary Rebellion had pitted Albemarle against Bath and had left the colonists of the two counties somewhat at odds with each other. It was by no means clear that Albemarle would rush to the defense of Bath County and, in fact, it did not,” Parramore wrote.

If there was a proximate cause of the war, it was the settlement of New Bern by Swiss immigrants and members of the Palatine religious sect escaping religious persecution in Europe.

“New Bern was built on what (the Tuscarora) considered to be part of their capital city,” Smallwood said.

Baron Christopher DeGraffenreid, the founder of New Bern, in his “Account of the Tuscarora War,” touched on many of the issues that have been cited as causing the conflict.

“What caused the Indian war was firstly, the slanders and instigations of certain plotters against Governor Hyde, and secondly, against me, in that they talked the Indians into believing that I had come to take their land,” he wrote. “Talked them out of this and it was proven by the friendliness I had shown them, as also by the payment for the land where I settled at the beginning (namely that upon which the little city of New Bern was begun), regardless of the fact that the seller was to have given it over to me free.”

Captured with surveyor John Lawson, DeGraffenreid was able to talk his way out of imprisonment and possible death.

It is possible Lawson could have avoided his fate, but, Smallwood said, “he quarreled with the chiefs. You’re being held prisoner, and you’ve been put on trial, and then you go argue with the prosecuting attorney and the judge who decides whether you live or die.”

Lawson, whose book “History of North Carolina” gave accurate and clear-eyed accounts of Native life in the colonies, was not so lucky, and may have had a hand in his own undoing. Accused by his captors of surveying the Tuscarora land for the purpose of selling it, he was tried and convicted and sentenced to death.

Like the North Carolina colony, the Tuscarora had internal divisions. Parramore described the Tuscarora as “not a nation and probably not even a confederacy though colonial perceptions of them had not traditionally recognized any significant internal divisions.”

Smallwood, however, paints a different picture.

“The whole structure was family based,” he said. “With that being said, they were all united because the whole nation is united by blood.”

Within that nation family, there were specific ways to make decisions that would affect all members for the Tuscarora nation, Smallwood said, describing the decision-making process as “a democracy.”

Smallwood explained that Lawson was convicted after “all of the chiefs met in the war council. In that council, they all agree to execute Lawson.”

War: First conflict

When the war first broke out in 1711, South Carolina sent military aid. Col. John Barnwell left South Carolina with “30 white men and nearly 500 Indians,” the Carolana website states.

Although Barnwell may have included giving military aid to North Carolina in his reasoning, by his actions and those of the men under his command, the profit that could be realized from the bounty on scalps and selling Native Americans into slavery was an important part of why he made the trip.

Thomas Peotta in his 2018 doctoral dissertation, “Dark Mimesis: A Cultural History of the Scalping Paradigm,” at the University of British Columbia, describes how profitable scalps and prisoners could be.

“Virginia and Carolina offered scalp and prisoner bounties to militiamen and allied Indians. Virginia…offered £20 per scalp to British colonists, while uninvolved Tuscaroras on Virginia’s frontier were offered a bounty of 6 blankets apiece…for the scalps of Hancock’s warriors, and market prices for enslaved women and children,” he wrote.

For Barnwell, the scalps had an additionally benefit, Peotta wrote, noting that “scalps and prisoners also offered a way to tally the dead: Barnwell’s forces recorded 52 scalps and 30 captives after (his) victory at Torhunta in 1712.” Torhunta is present day Pikeville in Wayne County.

After a series of battles with the Tuscarora including a 10-day siege at their main settlement in Craven County, Barnwell reached an agreement with the Tuscarora combatants to pay tribute and lay down their arms. After signing the agreement, he invited some of the local Indians, who had not attacked the colonists, into his camp. They were then seized, DeGraffenreid wrote, and sold into slavery

“He thought of a means of going back to South Carolina with profit, and under the pretense of a good peace he enticed a goodly number of the friendly Indians or savage Carolinians, took them prisoner at Core Town (to this his tributary Indians were entirely inclined because they hoped to get a considerable sum from each prisoner) and made his way home with his living plunder…This so unchristian act very properly embittered the rest of the Tuscarora and Carolina Indians very much, although heathens, so that they no longer trusted the Christians,” he wrote.

War: Conclusion

The action reignited the war, with King Hancock again leading the Tuscarora aligned with him. Renewing the conflict may have been justified, but it was not sanctioned by the war council, allowing the northern Tuscarora to remain neutral.

It would take another military expedition from South Carolina, this one led by Col. James Moore to end the war, but it also led to an open rift between King Hancock and the northern Tuscarora.

King Hancock was captured by northern Tuscarora at the orders of Chief Blunt (or Blount) in November of 1712 and turned over to North Carolina authorities who executed him.

The war did not end with Hancock’s death, however.

The agreement with Blunt was that he was to deliver the scalps of key leaders to North Carolina authorities by the end of the year. When he failed to do so, Moore renewed his campaign.

Finally, following a three-day siege at Fort Neoheroka the war came to an end, although there were sporadic raids and fighting until 1715.

Aftermath

For the tribal nations that had aligned with the South Carolina expeditions, their participation sparked “a continental war in the back country,” Smallwood explained.

“Because of the role,” Smallwood continued. “Those Indians in that area played in the war, it set off a continental Indian War. he Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondaga, the Senecas, and (allied tribes) came south, and they completely obliterated the (the southern tribes).”

In North Carolina, the war was a harbinger of extraordinary change. Initially the war’s end brought brought economic hardship to what was then called Bath County, an area that now includes Beaufort, Hyde, Bladen, Onslow, Carteret and New Hanover counties.

“The concentration of Indian attacks on frontier settlements during the war and the continuation of raids after the peace of 1713 stifled economic growth in Bath County and contributed to temporary food shortages throughout the colony,” Christine Styrna explained in a 1990 doctoral dissertation at the College of William and Mary.

But if the initial effect was to wreak havoc on the colony’s economy, the war also “provided certain colonial leaders with the opportunity to reinforce their economic and political power while serving as a catalyst for economic development,” Styrna noted.

Bath and New Bern had taken the brunt of the Tuscarora raids, and there, Styrna wrote, “colonists slowly rebuilt their homes and fortunes.”

The rest of the colony, though, experienced a “boom period” in which coastal and local trade increased dramatically. According to the shipping reports Styrna cites from the Boston Newsletter, “the number of vessels sailing to and from ports in North Carolina ports elsewhere between 1716 and 1720 increased fourfold in comparison to the five-year period before the war.”

If, however, North Carolina was on the road to recovery, the fate of the Tuscarora was one of enslavement and exile, leading to a diaspora of the tribal nation that stretched from North Carolina to Canada.

Most of the southern Tuscarora emigrated north. The largest group returned to the Iroquois in New York, becoming numerous enough that in 1722 the Tuscarora became the sixth nation of the Iroquois Confederacy.

As they moved north, some settled in Pennsylvania. There is today, a Tuscarora Mountain in south central Pennsylvania.

Many of them, though, settled in small communities throughout North Carolina and other states east of the Mississippi.

“It’s like you take a plate or mirror and you drop it on the floor and it shatters and shards go everywhere,” Smallwood said. “There’s some big chunks, and then there are lots of little chunks. And those little chunks, are scattered all over eastern North Carolina. They’re at least today, seven different factions of Tuscaroras that are (in North Carolina). And larger groups of them who are in Virginia, and even over into eastern Ohio.”

Coastal Review will not publish Thursday and Friday in observation of the Thanksgiving holiday.

Featured Image

A recent visit to Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge offered little in the way of migratory waterfowl viewing for which it’s known but did yield this glimpse of a whitetail doe through the trees. The refuge, which was established in 1934, spans some 50,000 acres, including the 40,000-acre Lake Mattamuskeet, the largest natural lake in North Carolina. Photo: Kip Tabb

Snapped an image of the North Carolina coast worth sharing? Submit your photo.

Ocracoke Preservation Society is readying for its first historic home tour since before Hurricane Dorian hit the region in 2019.

Set for 2 to 4 p.m. Friday, Nov. 28, tickets are $50 each and can be purchased online.

The tour features four homes along Lighthouse Road within the nationally recognized Ocracoke Historic District and wraps up at 4:30 p.m. with a first look at the renovation of the Island Inn. Built in 1901, the building has been an Odd Fellow’s Lodge, a school, Navy officer’s club, a coffee shop and more. Ocracoke Preservation Society purchased the building and is renovating the structure to serve as a community, education and visitors center.

Holiday lighting of the Commons, the public garden space next to the Inn, is at 5:30 p.m., followed at 6 p.m. by a boat parade sponsored by the Fish House. Spectators can view the parade from anywhere on Silver Lake Harbor.

The night will close with an Ocrafolk Opry Concert with music provided by island residents at Ocracoke Alive’s Deepwater Theater at 8 p.m.

“The home tour is an incredible opportunity to step back in time and experience the design and details of historic structures on the island from folks so intimately involved,” the society’s Administrator Warner Passanisi said in a release. “This event is a unique opportunity for visitors to experience Ocracoke inside and out.”

The Ocracoke Preservation Society was founded in 1983 and has maintained since 1992 a museum in the David Williams House built around 1900.

Two heavily shoaled channels used by state ferries to Ocracoke Island are expected to be dredged next year, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The Corps’ Wilmington District announced Wednesday its award of a contract for maintenance dredging of Rollinson Channel, also known as the Hatteras Ferry Channel, and the Big Foot Slough portion of Silver Lake Harbor at the opposite end of the island.

Chesapeake, Virginia-based Cottrell Contracting Corp. was awarded the $11,778,000 contract to restore the channels to their authorized depths, “which is vital for the safety of mariners, navigation, and the local economy that relies on waterborne commerce and recreational boating,” according to a Corps release.

“This effort will help ensure the continued navigability of these important waterways and support the essential work of our stakeholders at the North Carolina Ferry Division,” the release states. “The Wilmington District is committed to working closely with the contractor and local stakeholders to minimize disruption and ensure a successful project completion.”

EAST LAKE — Red wolf populations in northeastern North Carolina are still far from recovered, but there are optimistic signs that the highly endangered species now has a solid chance.

More wolves are breeding, more pups are surviving, coyote hybridization has been cut, and there are fewer mortalities from vehicle strikes and gunshots.

While still modest, those successes reflect increased community engagement and renewed commitment from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and its numerous partners.

“It’s kind of a small crew, but we’re really dedicated to what we’re doing here,” wildlife biologist Joe Madison, North Carolina program manager for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Red Wolf Recovery Program, said during a virtual meeting held Sept. 23 to provide updates on the program. “We want to make this work. We want to work with landowners to make this work. We don’t want to impose it.”

Madison said that only about half of the red wolves roam within Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge land. The population, as of August, according to Fish and Wildlife data, totals about 30 red wolves, including 18 collared adults as well as uncollared juvenile wolves and a few other adults. This population roams the designated recovery area, 1.7 million acres of public and private land in Hyde, Dare, Tyrrell, Washington and Beaufort counties. Red wolves have been seen in all five counties

It is the only known wild population in the world.

Red wolves had once ranged over wide swaths of the U.S. mainland, including much of the Gulf Coast and Southeast regions, but after years of overhunting and habitat loss, the animals were declared extinct in the wild and added to the Endangered Species List in 1967. Twenty years later, four pairs of captive wolves, offspring of wild stragglers captured earlier in Louisiana, were transferred to Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, headquartered in Dare County. Innovative management tactics led to steady population growth, reaching a height of about 120 red wolves by 2007.

In 2020, there were only about seven collared wolves.

But poor communication with landowners led to angry confrontations over wolves coming onto private lands, while coyote hunting regulations led to mistaken identities.  Political support and funding for the recovery program dropped precipitously, and more wolves were being shot, whether intentionally or by mistake. By 2015, proposals were introduced to drastically reduce or potentially eliminate the program. After a series of lawsuits by environmental groups, the recovery program was eventually restored.

As Red Wolf Recovery Program Coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Emily Weller has acknowledged, the agency had to change the way it operated.

“Reintroducing a large carnivore into the wild had never been done before, and the focus of this program in the beginning was almost entirely biological,” Weller said, according to minutes of a management update meeting in September 2024. “But the social aspects, the community engagement, and human dimension — those were the cracks in our program’s foundation.”

Now the concept of “collaborative conservation” is viewed as critical to the survival of the red wolf, she said recently. 

“We cannot recover this species on our own,” Weller said during this week’s virtual update. “Our work depends on a pretty complex network of organizations, agencies, communities and individuals.”

That network includes veterinarian care at North Carolina State University and local veterinarians, staff with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, and assistance from numerous nonprofit and nongovernment groups.

“The science tells us what’s possible,” Weller said. “But it’s the relationships, the trust, the collaboration, that really determine what’s achievable.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service also now works with “Prey for the Pack,” a habitat-improvement program that engages with private landowners in eastern North Carolina wolf recovery areas in mutually beneficial habitat programming.

The Red Wolf Recovery Program also works closely with 52 zoo and wildlife centers across the country as part of the Saving Animals From Extinction, or SAFE, program, an initiative of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which currently cares for 280 captive red wolves. Part of the program’s goal is to increase the SAFE population to 400.

“They are a critical piece of this program in that they support the establishment of wild populations in maintaining genetic diversity,” Weller said.

Much care goes into choosing captive wolves to transfer to the recovery program in hopes of future pairing, as well as deciding which pups to place into dens with similarly aged pups for wild mothers to adopt, Weller noted.

“We rely on universities and academia for research and data to guide and base our decisions, and we’re using it constantly to adapt our management,” she said. “And then we need close coordination and communication with local landowners and community members to understand and incorporate their concerns and hopes for their community, as they have the most direct bearing on conservation and recovery, since they are the ones that live with the red wolves.”

Weller said that, other than a period of time when spending was frozen or restricted, the current funding for the Red Wolf Recovery Program had not been reduced.

Ultimately, she said, success will be when red wolves can be delisted — when they don’t need human help to survive — which is expected to take about 50 years, if all goes as planned.

Criteria that meets that goal include measurable thresholds: three viable populations, distributed to maximize redundancy and protect from catastrophic loss; one population of at least 180 and two with a minimum of 280 wolves, each with high gene diversity. Populations must be stable or growing for a decade with minimal human help and have a 95% probability of persisting for 100 years.

And finally, there must be long-term commitment that the sustainable populations can be maintained into the foreseeable future without Endangered Species Act protections.

“Red wolf recovery is about far more than just saving the species,” Weller added. “It’s about restoring ecosystems or landscapes to their natural balanced state and creating healthier environments that benefit plants and wildlife, including game species, and people.”

Every December, the red wolf program issues a release strategy for the coming year, that sets out a plan of how many captive wolves to release into the wild population that will best enable genetic diversity and sustainable growth. Changing conditions will be considered in any necessary revisions.

“It is also important to recognize that the ability to execute many of the releases is highly dependent on numerous on-the-ground factors,” according to the 2024-25 plan. “These factors include, but are not limited to, the ability to successfully capture specific wild Red Wolves, the correct timing of birth, and size of wild ad captive litters, to allow for pup fostering, and the survival of individual wild Red Wolves included in the scenarios.

“Given the myriad of factors that influence the different scenarios, the Service’s actions described in this strategy require real-time flexibility and the ability to adapt to changing factors on the ground and situations; thus, they require management discretion in the field to maximize the chances of success.”

Madison said that the team depends on having that flexibility to make judgment calls and adjust management tactics. During the update meeting, he elaborated on numerous and highly complex strategies that go into pup fostering, proper wolf-human interactions and handling — as little as possible — and wolf feeding – frozen, wild, small mammals like rabbits, raccoons, nutria and fresh frozen roadkill, like deer — and matchmaking (wolves are picky and fickle, too).

But Madison seemed quite pleased with the improvements in pup population survival, an obviously critical component of species recovery.

The pup survival rate to one year is typically about 50%, he said, but after two complete litters didn’t make it in recent years,  the recovery team determined that the likely cause was canine distemper.

“So this year when these pups were in an acclimation pen, and they were five weeks old, we went in the pen, recaptured them, and we gave them their first round of vaccines,” Madison explained. “Also, we implanted them with abdominal transmitters so we would be able to track them after they were released.”

So far, so good, he said. A family group that was released into the wild in May seems to be thriving.

“We may go into the season with a great plan, but then, you know, stuff happens out there,” Madison said. “And we have to adjust and make do with the best we possibly can.”

The Outer Banks Association of Realtors announced this week that it had awarded eight $1,500 scholarships to graduating seniors from Dare County and Ocracoke Island.

The association said Tuesday that the awards reflect its “commitment to supporting the next generation of leaders” along the Outer Banks.

The association’s 2025 scholarship recipients include the following students:

• Julian Alvarez Isidoro – Manteo High School.
• Kristin Bennett – Cape Hatteras Secondary School.
• Samuel Cage – Manteo High School.
• Dresden Jackson – First Flight High School.
• Mya Kelly – Manteo High School.
• Audrey Kramer – Cape Hatteras Secondary School.
• Caroline Stocks – Ocracoke High School.
• Spencer Twiford – Manteo High School.

The association’s scholarship committee chaired by Tricia Driscoll of Coldwell Banker Seaside Realty selected the recipients.

“The selection process is both humbling and inspiring,” Driscoll said in the announcement. “So many students had incredible stories. We’re proud to help our community by recognizing this year’s recipients, and we should all look forward to seeing the impact they’ll make.”

Scholarships were presented at each school’s awards night.

“Seeing these students walk the stage was incredibly rewarding,” Outer Banks Association of Realtors President Christi Bryant in the statement, adding that it was a privilege to support them on behalf of the association’s members.

Since the 1990s, the association has awarded over $300,000 in scholarships to more than 200 local students. These scholarships are made possible through the association’s annual Surf, Turf, and Roll initiative, a series of three fundraising events, including a surf fishing, golf, and bowling tournament, which invites the community to donate and support the association’s charitable funds. 

For more information on how to donate to these funds or how to get involved, visit www.outerbanksrealtors.com.

The North Carolina Ferry Division, under the N.C. Department of Transportation, announced on Friday that four of its ferry routes will adjust for the off-season.

The Ocracoke Express passenger ferry will end its seasonal service on Sept. 15. The 2025 season for the ferry that transports up to 129 passengers between Hatteras and Ocracoke’s Silver Lake Harbor began May 13.

The motor-vehicle ferries traveling between Southport and Fort Fisher, Swan Quarter and Ocracoke, and Cedar Island and Ocracoke are to begin Tuesday adhering to the following off-season schedules:

Cedar Island to Ocracoke: 7:30 a.m., 10:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.
Ocracoke to Cedar Island: 7:30 a.m., 1 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.

Swan Quarter to Ocracoke: 10 a.m., 1:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.
Ocracoke to Swan Quarter: 7 a.m., 10 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.

Southport to Fort Fisher during the week: 5:30 a.m., 7 a.m., 7:45 a.m., 8:30 a.m., 9:15 a.m., 10:45 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 1 p.m., 1:45 p.m., 2:30 p.m., 3:15 p.m., 4 p.m., 4:45 p.m. and 6:15 p.m.

Fort Fisher to Southport during the week: 6:15 a.m., 7:45 a.m., 8:30 a.m., 9:15 a.m., 10 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:15 p.m., 1:45 p.m., 2:30 p.m., 3:15 p.m., 4 p.m., 4:45 p.m., 5:30 p.m. and 7 p.m.

Southport to Fort Fisher on weekends: 7 a.m., 8:30 a.m., 9:15 a.m., 10 a.m., 10:45 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:15 p.m., 1 p.m., 1:45 p.m., 2:30 p.m., 3:15 p.m., 4 p.m., 4:45 p.m. and 6:15 p.m.

Fort Fisher to Southport on weekends: 7:45 a.m., 9:15 a.m., 10 a.m., 10:45 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:15 p.m., 1 p.m., 1:45 p.m., 2:30 p.m., 3:15 p.m., 4 p.m., 4:45 p.m., 5:30 p.m. and 7 p.m.

Visit the website for a complete schedule of all state-run ferries.

Update 4:30 p.m. Tuesday:

Gov. Josh Stein declared a State of Emergency Tuesday ahead of the anticipated impacts from Hurricane Erin, which was about 650 miles south-southeast of Cape Hatteras and moving at 10 mph at around 2 p.m. Tuesday.

“Hurricane Erin will bring threats of coastal flooding, beach erosion, and dangerous surf conditions,” Stein said in a statement. “North Carolinians along the coast should get prepared now, ensure their emergency kit is ready, and listen to local emergency guidelines and alerts in the event they need to evacuate.” 

Original post 6 p.m. Monday:

Eastern North Carolina should expect to see impacts from Hurricane Erin, including coastal flooding, starting Tuesday.

The center of the storm was predicted to remain off the coast by a couple hundred miles, but “We still expect impacts across eastern North Carolina, specifically coastal areas,” National Weather Service Meteorologist Erik Heden said during a webinar briefing at lunchtime Monday.

Effects will likely include dangerous surf and rip currents, storm surge, damaging beach erosion, major coastal flooding and overwash.

The storm was about 820 miles south-southeast of Buxton, or 810 miles south-southeast of Morehead City, according to the National Weather Service’s 5 p.m. Monday update. The Category 4 storm was moving northwest at 10 mph.

A storm surge watch and tropical storm watch were issued for eastern Carteret County, Hatteras Island, the northern Outer Banks and Ocracoke Island.

From Duck to Cape Lookout, water levels could reach up to 4 feet above ground, and 1 to 3 feet north of Duck and south of Cape Lookout.

“Elevated water levels will likely be accompanied by large and destructive waves,” forecasters said, adding peak storm surge forecast is generally provided within 48 hours of storm surge occurring in the area.

Heden, who is with the National Weather Service’s Morehead City/Newport office, said Monday that meteorologists began watching the storm Friday, and the storm is expected to increase in size in the coming days.

Updates throughout the weekend showed that as of midday Saturday, the storm was a Category 5, which has winds at 157 mph or faster on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale. The major storm weakened to a Category 4, then to a Category 3, with winds from 111 to 129 mph, by Sunday evening.

The storm restrengthened overnight Sunday to a Category 4, with 140 mph winds, Heden said. Sustained wind speeds for Category 4 storms range from 130 to 156 miles per hour.

Forecasters said Monday that tropical storm force wind gusts were possible for the coast, with the highest probability for the Outer Banks, but stronger gusts were possible in any passing outer rainbands associated with Erin.

“The earliest reasonable time of arrival of tropical storm force winds for the immediate coastline is sometime Wednesday morning,” forecasters said. “However, the most likely time this area could see tropical storm force winds will be during the evening on Wednesday.”

The main concern with the winds will be the potential for soundside flooding on a north to northeast wind for Down East Carteret County, Ocracoke and Hatteras Island on Thursday.

Coastal flooding could begin as soon as Tuesday, more than 24 hours before any tropical storm force winds arrive, peaking Wednesday into Thursday and slowly easing up later in the week, according to the National Weather Service.

Forecasters also advise that extensive beach erosion could occur because of strong, long periods of wave energy with waves as high as 15 to more than 20 feet in the surf zone. These waves will also make the surf extremely dangerous Wednesday into Thursday, as well as the life-threatening rip currents expected the majority of this week.

Hyde, Dare counties

Hyde and Dare counties have issued states of emergency and were evacuating Ocracoke and parts of Hatteras Island ahead of the storm’s arrival Monday.

States of emergency went into effect for Dare County at 6 p.m. Sunday, and for Hyde County’s Ocracoke Island at 8 p.m. Sunday.

Dare County officials announced Sunday afternoon a mandatory evacuation had been issued for Hatteras Island Zone A, which includes all of Hatteras Island, including the unincorporated villages of Rodanthe, Waves, Salvo, Avon, Buxton, Frisco, and Hatteras.

Visitors were to evacuate by 10 a.m. Monday and residents must begin evacuating beginning at 8 a.m. Tuesday.

The mandatory evacuation order for Ocracoke visitors began at 8 p.m. Sunday and for residents starting at 6 p.m. Tuesday.

“It is extremely likely that Hyde County EMS services will not be available in Ocracoke due to Highway 12 being inaccessible. Please take this warning seriously, especially if you have medical issues or are likely to need special care,” Hyde officials said in a release, adding plans to continue monitoring the forecast and issue advisories as appropriate.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation’s ferry division announced Monday that only residents, homeowners or vendors with an Ocracoke re-entry sticker on their vehicles will be allowed on ferries inbound to Ocracoke, in coordination with the mandatory evacuation order.

“While we don’t expect Hurricane Erin to make landfall on the Outer Banks, there will likely be large waves, ocean overwash and major coastal flooding that impact Highway 12,” said Ferry Division Director Jed Dixon. “We hope everyone will heed the evacuation orders for their own safety.”

No visitors will be allowed access to Ocracoke Island until the evacuation order is lifted.

Priority boarding will be suspended for all vessels leaving Ocracoke, and tolls have been waived for ferries heading from Ocracoke to Cedar Island or Swan Quarter.

The Ocracoke-Hatteras, Ocracoke-Cedar Island and Ocracoke-Swan Quarter routes will run the published schedules until the evacuation is complete.

Service on the Ocracoke Express passenger ferry, which runs between the village of Ocracoke and Hatteras Island, is suspended until further notice.

For real-time travel information, please check NCDOT’s DriveNC.gov and the agency’s social media accounts. People can also receive text or email notifications on ferry schedules and changes through the Ferry Information Notification System, or FINS.  

National Park Service

To be consistent with Dare and Hyde counties, Cape Hatteras National Seashore will be closing beach accesses and facilities, the National Park Service said.

“The Coastal Flood Watch indicates that extreme beach erosion and coastal damage is likely along the oceanside, resulting in a significant threat to life and property. Large, dangerous waves will likely inundate and destroy protective dune structures,” according to the press release. “Severe flooding will likely extend inland where there is vulnerable or no protective dune structure, flooding homes and businesses with some structural damage possible. Roads will likely be impassable under several feet of water and vehicles will likely be submerged.”

Museum of the Sea at Cape Hatteras Lighthouse and the Discovery Center on Ocracoke Island will close by 5 p.m. Monday. 

Cape Point, Frisco, and Ocracoke campgrounds were to close by 3 p.m. Monday and Oregon Inlet Campground will close at noon Tuesday. Bodie Island Lighthouse will close Wednesday and Thursday.

Off-road vehicle ramps were to close by 9 p.m. Monday. To view the status of beach access ramps, visit http://go.nps.gov/beachaccess.

Due to the presence of threatened oceanfront structures, the Seashore will close beach access in Rodanthe from the terminus of Old Highway 12 to the end of the Ocean Drive and in front of the village of Buxton southward to Ramp 43.   

Visitors should stay off the beaches completely and discontinue use of all beach trails and boardwalks beginning Tuesday morning.

Hurricane Erin is forecast to be a potential threat to Cape Lookout National
Seashore, with North and South Core Banks expected to experience the most significant impacts, Lookout officials said, adding that coastal flooding will likely be a long duration issue with impacts lasting late into the week.

Cape Lookout National Seashore officials plan to close facilities starting at noon Tuesday, including the Light Station Visitor Center and the Keepers Quarters Museum, through at least Friday.    

Island Express Ferry Service will cease operations out of Beaufort and Harkers Island beginning Wednesday through Friday.   

Great Island and Long Point Cabin Camps reservations have been canceled for Tuesday through Friday. The closure could extend beyond Friday, depending on the impact on the seashore. 

“I hope Erin will remain off the coast and head out sea, but hope is not a good way forward.  I really hate to impact people’s plans, and we aim to reopen as soon as possible afterwards,” acting Superintendent Katherine Cushinberry said Monday in a statement.

The National Park Service staff will be monitoring ongoing developments with Hurricane Erin and will post updates as needed on the park website at go.nps.gov/stormwatch.

MOREHEAD CITY – Keep telling your story.

That was the message to those who attended the first meeting of the North Carolina Coastal Counties Fisheries Coalition held Tuesday afternoon in the Crystal Coast Civic Center.

Dare County Board of Commissioners Chairman Bob Woodard, who initiated the coalition to be a voice for the commercial fishing industry, welcomed elected officials and staff from Beaufort, Camden, Carteret, Chowan, Craven, Currituck, Dare, Hertford, Hyde, Onslow, Pamlico, Pasquotank, Perquimans, Tyrrell and Washington counties, and 10 coastal legislators or their representative.

“We’ve got a lot of folks here today concerned about this coalition, and this effort,” Woodard said, adding that many of the more than 100 in the audience were in Raleigh to protest House Bill 442.

But the head of the state’s recreational fishing association called the group’s goals “disappointing.”

‘No due process’

First introduced in March to open up the recreational season for flounder and red snapper, the Senate amended the bill in mid-June to include a trawling ban in the state’s inland waters and within a half-mile of the shoreline.

The proposed ban was met with both outcry and support, but when the Senate kicked the amended bill back to the House, representatives chose not to advance the bill. Since June 25, the bill has been parked in a House committee.

Woodard set the coalition in motion July 3 with a letter to the 18 other coastal counties that border bodies of water from which licensed commercial fishermen are required to report their catch, representing 20% of the state’s counties, he explained.

“That should send a clear voice to our legislators, that we got 20% of the entire counties in the state of North Carolina, and hopefully we will grow up more for people that believe in eating the fresh local seafood from clean, clear waters in our state, rather than foreign food that comes into our country. I don’t know about you, but I want to eat fresh, seafood,” he said.

When Woodard began the meeting Tuesday, he told the crowd that he was “appalled to see that (proposed trawling ban) went to the House,” and wrote a letter June 30 to Senate Leader Phil Berger.

Woodard read the second paragraph of that letter aloud: “Our democratic system, established by our forefathers, was designed to ensure that every voice in leadership could be heard-whether in support or opposition. At its core, our Constitution is built on mutual respect and, most importantly, due process.”

Woodard said, “everyone in this room sitting here today certainly knows there was no due process,” and then explained how he pitched the idea to form the coalition to a fellow commissioner.

“I said, ‘Enough is enough.’ I’ve been a chairman in Dare County for the last 10 years. I’ve been on the board the last 12 years,” Woodard said. “Every single year, we have to fight the regulatory agencies. We have to fight the leadership.”

It was time “to come together, not just counties, not just fishermen, but stakeholders all over the south and this entire state. We need to educate those legislators that aren’t living on the coast.”

Once given the board’s blessing, Woodard sent the letter proposing the North Carolina Coastal Counties Fisheries Coalition.

“The goal of this coalition is to bring together county leaders from coastal regions to address these critical issues with a unified voice. By coordinating our efforts, we can better advocate for the long-term health and sustainability of our fisheries, our local economies and our fishermen’s way of life,” Woodard said.

About the coalition

Members agreed that the coalition would be a public body and have its next meeting at 1 p.m. Sept. 16 in the civic center, ahead of when the legislature is expected to convene.

After that, the coalition will meet quarterly in Carteret County because of its central location.

Woodard emphasized he wanted the coalition to be “as transparent as humanly possible,” adding he wanted the “public to be here.”

The coalition adopted a mission statement to support commercial fishermen and fishing communities, protect their livelihoods, preserve coastal heritage, “and safeguard the economic vitality of our working waterfronts. Together, we work to ensure the continued harvest of high-quality North Carolina seafood—feeding families, strengthening communities, and ensuring North Carolina Catch remains a priority for consumers to enjoy throughout our state and beyond.”

During the discussion, Pamlico County Commissioner Candy Bohmert said that the coalition should focus on promoting — rather than stating it’s out to save — the commercial fishing industry.

“We don’t need to save these people. They save themselves. We need to empower them,” Bohmert said. “We really need to kind of change that language. We’re promoting them. We’re promoting our commercial history. We’re promoting all of that because they’re important.”

Bobby Outten, Dare County’s manager and attorney, is to serve as staff to the board.

Outten explained that the intention with the coalition is to act as a governmental body.

“The fisheries groups have for years been working hard to deal with fisheries issues, and what we found is the legislators aren’t listening, and it’s a hard road, and it’s a tough time,” Outten said.

The idea is to get the governmental entities of the affected counties together and “then be the voice for the political side of this,” Outten said.

Fisheries groups will still be the resource to disseminate the information, but the coalition will be “the voice of the political counties.”

From the legislators

There were nearly a dozen coastal legislators at the meeting, including Sen. Bobby Hanig, R-Currituck. Hanig has been a vocal opponent of the trawling ban since it was first proposed at a Senate committee meeting June 17.

“We’ve never had the opportunity to tell our story. Well, guess what God brought us? He brought us H442, and you know what that did? That wasn’t the shot heard around the world. That was the backfire heard around the world. Let me tell you why. Now we have the ability to be on the offense, and we have to keep that ability to be on the offense,” Hanig said.

That bill “is allowing us to tell our story,” he said, adding that it led to the coalition and got 700 people to Raleigh in about three days.

The turnout in Raleigh brought together various aspects of the industry, such as commercial fishermen, packing houses, “everybody. You know why? Because what’s the first thing they went after? The shrimp, right? They’re going after everything,” Hanig said. “Because that’s what they’re after, folks, they make no qualms about it. They’re after our industry.”

In response to an audience member asking who “they” are, Hanig said “Pick someone. The CCA, the Wildlife Federation, certain legislators, you know, their efforts. They’re after this industry. They make no bones about it. They’ve been telling the wrong story, the false story, for too long, and we haven’t stopped that.” The CCA is the Coastal Conservation Association North Carolina.

“I implore you, tell your story. Do not be afraid to tell your story,” Hanig said. “Let them know where you’re coming from, because those stories matter.”

Rep. Carson Smith, R-Pender, told the crowd that people in Raleigh think there’s no fish, no crabs, no shrimp, that “our fishery is completely depleted, because that’s what the Marine Fisheries Commission is telling them.”

He added that this message is what he feels pitted recreational against commercial fishing, and “they think that the shrimp trawl has killed all the fish.”

Smith suggested two resolutions: Ask the “General Assembly to completely redo the Marine Fisheries Commission,” and “tell the Wildlife Resources Commission, ‘hey, stay in your lane.’ You count the trout in the mountains, but don’t use state resources” to try to close the commercial fishing industry down.

Sen. Bob Brinson, R-Beaufort, said the best way to educate folks in Raleigh is by “getting them on your boats, getting them in your oyster beds, getting them in your fish houses, and showing them what it is you do and how you do it.”

Sen. Norm Sanderson, R-Carteret, explained that when the Senate voted on House Bill 442 June 19, four voted against, but 40-plus voted in favor, which he didn’t expect.

He later found out that the votes for the amendment were for the “environmental side because they claim that shrimp trawling was destroying the environment in our sound. That it was going to destroy all kinds of fishing. Well, that’s one of the talking points that the CCA has used for the last 20 years,” he said.

Sanderson said that he was also upset about how the bill was amended in the Senate, “because the process stunk to high heaven.”

He explained that he was co-chair in the Agriculture Committee when the amendment “first came about, and that is the last thing that you ever do to a committee chairman,” he said. “If you’ve got something that’s going to be contentious, if you’ve got something that’s going to cause a lot of outcry or pushback,” you should go to them before the meeting. But Sanderson said that’s not what happened in this case.

“Let’s stay strong. Keep helping us. Keep telling your story, spreading this message across and around this state, so that the next time this happens, there’ll be an outcry from all over this state,” he said.

Response from CCA-NC

Coastal Conservation Association-North Carolina Executive Director David Sneed told Coastal Review in an email that “it is disappointing to read the goal of this new coalition is apparently to create a vehicle only for ‘battling issues that affect the state’s commercial fishing industry’ (fewer than 2,000 people who profit from a public trust resource) rather than acting in the public interest for the 11 million citizens of North Carolina who own our public trust resources and would benefit enormously from a healthy, sustainable coastal fishery.”

The coalition would be better served by recognizing the foundational, bedrock principles established by the public trust doctrine and the state’s constitution. “That North Carolina’s coastal fisheries resources belong to all 11 million citizens of this State and must be managed, preserved, and protected for the overall benefit of those citizens and future generations.  In addition, the coalition’s approach only divides and disenfranchises the not-for-profit fishing public that lives in and visits our coastal counties,” Sneed continued.

“There are more than 91,000 Coastal Recreational Fishing Licenses sold across the state’s 19 coastal counties each year, and it is reliably estimated that more than 300,000 people spend nearly $1.5 billion annually across the three Congressional Districts that encompass these 19 coastal counties—people who not only live in our coastal counties but also people from inland counties who visit our coast and spend money supporting our coastal fishing communities,” he said. “Our hope would be that any efforts by this coalition will be focused on building a true coalition in the public interest—one that will support the sound management of our coastal fisheries resources to achieve the long-term sustainability that all North Carolinians deserve and are entitled to under the law.”

Part of a series about the effects federal budget and staff cuts and the cancellations of programs and services are having in coastal North Carolina.

MANTEO — In the six months since the chaotic and seemingly random cutting in the federal government began, a terrible uneasiness has descended on the northeast corner of North Carolina, where all of the state’s nine national wildlife refuges employ neighbors and family members who live in the rural communities in which they’re located.

At least 10 Coastal North Carolina National Wildlife Refuge Complex staff and five employees of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s regional Ecological Services office in Raleigh, so far, are believed to have voluntarily left their jobs, whether nudged by coercion or incentives.

With staff forbidden to speak with media, and ongoing legal challenges and limited public information creating uncertainty, no one appears to know what will happen to their refuges.

“I just found out we should be getting some staffing numbers from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the next couple of weeks,” Howard Phillips, the Southeastern representative for the National Wildlife Refuge Association, a nonprofit advocacy and support group for the refuges, told Coastal Review, citing informed but unofficial sources. “The dust seems to be settling a little and (the agency) is starting to get a handle on where they stand.”

But Phillips, who retired at the end of 2020 as manager of Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in Tyrrell County, says he fears that serious consequences are already baked into the refuges’ cake, no matter what the government decides to do. The lack of trust engendered by often abrupt, unexplained cuts of staff, research and budgets as well as the “crippling” brain drain of expertise, experience and local knowledge has only made the situation more problematic.

“Could the administration suddenly decide they want to hire everybody back and start doing conservation again?” he continued. “That would take at least six months, probably 12 months. They’d have to be trained.”

The stark reality, he added, is that without knowing the Trump administration’s timeline or goal in the current upheaval, it’s impossible to understand the long-term impacts and impractical to expect much to change, much less improve.

“I mean, they’ve just given no indication that they’re going to do anything that’s going to reverse the trend right now, which is down, down, down, down,” Phillips said.

An unnamed spokesperson from the agency’s public affairs office ignored Coastal Review’s request to authorize or facilitate a refuge staff interview, but responded to several questions about impacts on North Carolina’s wildlife refuges in a May 23 email.

“As part of the broader efforts led by the Department of the Interior under President Trump’s leadership, we are implementing necessary reforms to ensure fiscal responsibility, operational efficiency, and government accountability,” the spokesperson wrote. “While we do not comment on personnel matters, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service remains committed to fulfilling our mission of conserving fish, wildlife, and natural resources for the American people.” 

Refuges in the coastal complex encompass nearly a half-million acres of farmlands, swamp forests and pocosin peatlands, intersected by rivers, streams, canals, lakes and sounds within the nation’s second-largest estuarine system.

The nine refuges — Alligator River, Pea Island, Mackay Island, Currituck, Mattamuskeet, Pocosin Lakes, Cedar Island, Swan Quarter, Roanoke River — are stretched along vast swaths of geography in the coastal plain that provide habitat for unique species and globally important ecosystems.

For instance, the critically endangered wild red wolves, the only surviving in the world, roam within a five-county recovery area based out of Alligator River, descendants of Spanish mustangs range free in Currituck, and thousands of migratory birds and waterfowl passing along the Atlantic Flyway overwinter every year at Mattamuskeet and Pocosin Lakes.

Mattamuskeet, the state’s largest natural lake, is undergoing an innovative and intensive watershed restoration project many years in the planning. And Pocosin Lakes, named for the Native American term for “swamp on hill” because of its boggy peat soil, has been studied by Duke University researchers for its ability to remediate carbon pollution. The refuge has also nearly completed an extensive rewetting project to restore the ability of the pocosin peat to absorb carbon dioxide and resist wildfires.

Two major wildfires in and around the refuge in recent decades have burned deep in the ground for many weeks, spewing tons of carbon back into the environment, with one smoldering for six months before it was finally extinguished.

Therein lies the dilemma — and the risk — to the refuges: What happens when there’s no one available to take proper care of the refuges, and to even continue the conservation mission?

Pocosin Lakes, for instance, with the recent retirement of former manager Wendy Stanton, no longer has a refuge manager.

“You know, with Wendy gone now, I don’t know that there’s anybody left at Pocosin Lakes that really understands that hydrology restoration and how it works,” Phillips said.

But it’s more than the upper-level staff, said Bonnie Strawser, president of the Coastal Wildlife Refuge Society, a local nonprofit group that supports all of the eastern North Carolina refuges. It’s also the loss of staff that maintain buildings and trails, she said, as well as the biologists who monitor water and test soil.

Strawser, who retired in 2020 after 40 years with Fish and Wildlife as visitor services manager, said that the project leader for Coastal North Carolina National Wildlife Refuge Rebekah Martin has designated acting managers in each refuge, but that’s in addition to their regular jobs with the refuges.

Martin is based at the agency’s Roanoke Island headquarters but is not authorized to speak to reporters. According to a 2023 article on the coastal refuges website, Martin oversees about 400,000 acres of habitat with more than a dozen endangered or threatened species. At the time, it said, the complex had 35 employees and more than 400 volunteers.

“We are currently down to 10 staff, and this is regular O and M — operations and maintenance — funded by general funding, refuge funding,” Strawser said in a recent interview. “Now that does not include firefighters or law enforcement, because they are funded through different programs.”

Strawser said that there were no probationary employees in eastern North Carolina, so no one had been outright fired. Some staff who agreed to resign under one of the agency’s two rounds of the deferred resignation program, she said, were quickly shut down and put on administrative leave for varied periods of time while collecting their salaries.

Cuts in both the U.S. Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service will also hamper the agencies cooperative response to wildfires and disasters, including with the national interagency incident management teams. Strawser is a member of one of three teams in the southern area.

“I don’t know what in the world we’re going to do when fire season comes,” she said. “They stood down our team. It’s not going to be available, they said, at least until after July.”

As Strawser noted, a lot goes on behind the scenes to keep the refuges humming, including procedural processes to keep records and run programs, as well as have sponsors to maintain the “casual hire” personnel to respond to emergencies.

“But the Fish and Wildlife Service, because they lost so many people in the administrative positions, they don’t have anybody to handle the payments and the travel, so they can’t sponsor” for a team member, she said.

For the time being, the public many not notice much difference when they go to a refuge, Strawser said.

“The visitor centers are run by volunteers,” she said. “The public programs are conducted mostly by volunteers.” But there’s only three maintenance people for their nine national wildlife refuges.

“There’s been no talk of closing anything, but it’s just common sense there will problems if there’s nobody to grade the roads, if there’s nobody to do the mowing on the road shoulders, she said. “And if there’s no ‘daylighting’ of the roads, they’ll get overgrown, the sun won’t reach down, and the mud doesn’t dry out and the road is destabilized and before you know it, they’re not drivable.”

Mike Bryant, who was succeeded by Martin, had served as refuge manager for 20 years, from 1996 to 2016, and he witnessed decreasing support for the refuges from the federal government, he told Coastal Review in an interview. After retirement, he had also served as consultant for the National Wildlife Refuge Association, and was former president of the Coastal Wildlife Refuge Society. Although he said he keeps in touch, he is no longer directly involved with either group.

Since about 2010, Bryant said there has been a steady decline in staffing.

“You have refuges where there were multiple people, and with some of them, there’s just one person left, and so that’s part of the story,” he said. “So it had nothing to do with the past 60 or 90 days, whatever it is now.”

But it’s not just mandated reductions in staff that threaten the refuges, he said. The management challenge is also an aging workforce that may not be replaced.

“You got over half a million acres of National Wildlife Refuge in multiple counties, and spanning across North Carolina to the Virginia border, with all kinds of infrastructure and management mandates and no staff to get those mandates done,” Bryant said. “They’re just wondering, how are we going to meet our responsibilities if we’re the only ones left? It’s a morale buster.”

After being fully staffed around 2003, he said it seemed as if the Department of Interior stopped prioritizing conservation and Congress slowly began losing interest in supporting the refuges.

“The Fish and Wildlife budget has so many facets to it, so many other responsibilities under various laws, endangered species and ecological services and all these other entities within the agency, fisheries and all those things, are all important,” Bryant said. “But Congress was never convinced to budget specifically for operations and maintenance of national wildlife refuges.”

Meanwhile, scores of new refuges came on line in the last 25 years. And rather than hiring more personnel, more work was heaped on less staff.

“I was hired in 1996 to manage Alligator River and Pea Island,” Bryant said. “Two years later, when the manager left Mackey Island and Currituck refuges, the regional office called me and said, ‘Hey, we want you to manage those two.’ All of a sudden, I had four refuges.”

Two years later, he was told to hire and supervise a new manager at Pocosin Lakes. Then staff was reduced, forcing him to share staff between the refuges. Next, Roanoke River was added to his responsibilities — along with the 90-minute drive each way. During all those years, he was bumped up just one pay grade.

Bryant said he gets why people get frustrated with the inefficient, cumbersome aspects of the federal government. But he remembers back when the Clinton administration had reduced both staffing and regulations, and not only succeeded, but ended up with a balanced budget.

“We went through all of those things without ever feeling like the sky is falling,” he said. Rather than taking rational steps to achieve efficiency, the interest now seems more in “just destroying the government, constantly degrading it, and yes, crafting corruption.”

“There’s a few bad actors, no doubt, always, in every organization everywhere, no matter what the enterprise,” Bryant added. “There was a rational process to deal with bad employees, grounded in policy. And the policy was grounded in regulation, and the regulation was grounded in law.”

The first official unit of the National Wildlife Refuge System was Pelican Island in Florida, established for conservation in 1903 by President Theodore Roosevelt. Today there are 570 refuges and 30 wetland management districts on more than 150 million acres entrusted to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services and enjoyed by 69 million visitors.

Bryant is rooting for not just survival of the struggling refuge system, but its revival.

“I think we’ll recover,” he said. “I’m optimistic about that. But we’ll be deeply scarred.”

Update 4:30 p.m. Tuesday: The Ocracoke fireworks have been canceled due to the threat of thunderstorms and high winds forecast for Wednesday, July 2. The pre-fireworks gathering at the National Park Service docks has also been canceled.

Original post:

There are two fireworks shows planned for this week in celebration of the Fourth of July holiday on Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

A permitted show is scheduled for 9:15 p.m. Wednesday at the south end of Ocracoke Island and at 9 p.m. Friday at the Avon Fishing Pier.

Seashore officials are taking the opportunity to remind the public that it is illegal to detonate fireworks, or have fireworks in your possession, on all seashore beaches, including those on Ocracoke Island and in Rodanthe, Waves, Salvo, Avon, Buxton, Frisco and Hatteras Village.

“In addition to fireworks being illegal and a significant fire risk to local communities, the personal use of fireworks can be a considerable nuisance to humans, pets and wildlife,” officials said, adding that seashore law enforcement are to patrol beaches throughout the holiday week.

Pamlico Sound ferry routes linking the two mainland terminals and Ocracoke Village will remain on its spring schedule of six daily departures until a dredging project planned for the end of this month is complete.

North Carolina Department of Transportation’s Ferry Division officials said Tuesday that the Army Corps of Engineers had scheduled the emergency project because of shoaling in the Bigfoot Slough ferry channel near the village’s Silver Lake Harbor.

“Our boats are ready, our crews are ready, but the Bigfoot Slough channel is too shallow and narrow to operate our largest ferries safely there right now,” Ferry Division Director Jed Dixon said in a release.

The Corps is responsible for maintaining the channel and has scheduled the emergency dredging project to begin in late May. Weather permitting, the project is expected to take about a week to complete, according to NCDOT.

Once the channel is considered safe, both the Cedar Island-Ocracoke and Swan Quarter-Ocracoke routes will expand from their spring schedules of six daily departures to their summer schedules of eight daily departures.

Officials had initially planned to adopt the expanded summer schedules May 20.

For real-time text or email updates on weather or mechanical delays, sign up for the Ferry Information Notification System at www.ncdot.gov/fins. 

The state Division of Marine Fisheries will hold a public hearing later this month on a proposed shellfish lease in Hyde County.

The hearing will be hosted in-person in Swan Quarter at the Hyde County Courthouse, 40 Oyster Creek Road, and virtually via Webex. The hearing is on Ethan G. Credle’s lease application for a 2.28-acre shellfish bottom and water-column lease in Germantown Bay.

The hearing is set for 6 p.m. April 29.

Those who attend the hearing in person may sign up to speak between 5-6 p.m. on the evening of the hearing. Anyone who wishes to comment virtually must register to speak by 4 p.m. April 28 at deq.nc.gov/hyde-county-shellfish-lease-hearing-speaker-registration.

Written comments will be accepted until 5 p.m. April 30 either online or by mail to N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries, Shellfish Lease & Aquaculture Program, P.O. Box 769, 3441 Arendell St., Morehead City, NC 28557.

Hearing materials, including the Webex link, call-in number, presentation slides and biological investigation report are available at deq.nc.gov/news/events/hyde-county-shellfish-lease-hearing.

For more information, contact Marla Chuffo with the Division’s Habitat and Enhancement Section at 252-515-5480 or marla.chuffo@deq.nc.gov.

SWAN QUARTER — Turns out that those million big, invasive fish that were supposed to be swimming in Lake Mattamuskeet didn’t show up, as contractors conducting a mass removal project that began last year reevaluate the estimated population of common carp in the state’s largest natural freshwater lake.

“What we found is we’re not finding the carp numbers in the lake that we thought were there,” Kendall Smith, refuge manager at Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge, told the Lake Mattamuskeet Watershed Restoration Plan Core Stakeholder Team at a recent meeting.

“So far we have not detected any aggregations of fish. We are finding concentration, places where you find more fish than others, but nothing that would be considered an aggregation,” he said.

Smith explained that the refuge will continue to work with the contractor during the year to review other techniques, assess the issues with the carp’s habits and reproduction, and determine the next approach.

“We’re learning a lot about their movements, confirming whether or not they do activate in the wintertime or early spring,” Smith continued.

But reduction of carp, aggressive bottom feeders that are blamed for much of the lake’s turbidity, is just one of the multiple challenges being tackled. The team, made up of folks with local, state and federal expertise, including representatives from governments, nonprofits and landowners, is proving to be as resilient and adaptive as the lake itself.

“Like anything worthwhile, it’s the hard stuff you’ve got to pay attention to,” local farmer and former refuge biologist Kelly Davis told Coastal Review, “because the easy stuff works itself out, right?”

A member of the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, Davis, along with her late husband Blythe, for decades farmed 2,000 acres of farmland in Hyde County, of which about 150 acres drain into Lake Mattamuskeet.

In her observation, the lake’s biggest issue in restoring the submerged aquatic vegetation, or SAV, is the haziness of the water, to which the carp contribute by churning up the lake bottom.

“Whatever’s killing the grass,’ she said, “it’s sedimentation. It’s cloudy waters.”

 Often referred to as a jewel of Hyde County, Lake Mattamuskeet, the centerpiece of the refuge, is 6 miles wide, 18 miles long and averages 2 feet deep.

The 40,000-acre lake, expansive and often shimmering, is famously photogenic. Serene cypress swamps along its border could be described convincingly as habitat for elves and gnomes.

But its beauty belies its environmental vulnerability. It is situated on low land, surrounded by pocosin forests and rich farmlands, intersected by gated canals that drain water, sediment and nutrients into the lake.

In addition to nearby rivers, the vast Pamlico Sound, to the lake ecosystem’s benefit and detriment, contributes some of its marine life and waters, whether pushed in by wind-driven tides or flooding. 

Since the 1990s, the submerged aquatic vegetation in the lake had gradually then suddenly disappeared, depriving the hundreds of thousands of waterfowl along the Atlantic Flyway that had stopped over for food and shelter.

Once Hyde County’s community hub, the lake, the refuge and the long-closed Mattamuskeet Lodge, which the county plans to restore and reopen, is still supporting hunting, fishing and farming activities. And ducks, swans and geese still alight at Mattamuskeet, but now mostly at the seasonal duck impoundments created around the lake.

Since 2017, the stakeholder team has been focused on solutions to the lake’s water quality problems, including loss of SAV and persistent algal blooms, as well as flooding and drainage of the surrounding land.

Guidance for the work has been provided by a watershed restoration plan facilitated by the North Carolina Coastal Federation, in partnership with Hyde County, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. The Coastal Federation is the publisher of Coastal Review, an independent online newspaper that covers coastal issues in North Carolina.

Despite uncertainty with staffing and funding concerns related to recent cuts in the federal government, work at the lake and surrounding land is ongoing and planned for upcoming months, according to a discussion during the Jan. 30 team meeting in the Hyde County Government Complex.

Five projects, funded by a $16.86 million Regional Conservation Partnership Program grant awarded to the North Carolina Coastal Federation, are designed to enhance water quality within the Lake Mattamuskeet watershed.

Project planned are improvements in the Fairfield Drainage District including installing a pump station to reduce drainage into the lake and enhance crops, restoring 1,000 acres of wetlands on converted agricultural land, constructing a 4,506-linear foot living shoreline to protect a Natural Resources Conservation Service dike in Swan Quarter and other critical infrastructure, facilitating agricultural best management practices to mitigate discharge of agricultural runoff into the lake, and outreach to aquaculture producers in an effort to boost participation in oyster restoration.

The Coastal Federation is currently working to finalize a partnership agreement with the Conservation Service, according to the federation’s coastal advocate Alyson Flynn, the meeting’s moderator. She also said that the federation has contracted with consultant Jonathan Hinkle to assist in the design and modeling of the large-scale restoration projects.

Part of the work, which has a four-year timeline, with a potential 1-year extension, involves diverting, pumping and draining water on the land in a way that would avoid adding sediment or nutrients to the lake, a hydrology challenge to engineer and a problem when there may be divergent goals. Drainage improvements also include cleaning out major drainage canals.

 “We all agree that the lake is in poor health, and we want to help fix it, but what that looks like seem to change,” Flynn said in an interview, referring to the proposed Fairfield project. “And so, yes, by diverting that fresh water up into the north, we’re hoping that the lake water will naturally filter out through that designed wetland before it gets to the Intracoastal Waterway in the north, with the assistance of pumps.”

Davis, who attended the stakeholders meeting informally as an area landowner, said that water is affected by changes in sea level and by wind tide, and there’s no choice but to work with the conditions, whatever their whims.  

“There will be times where some of that water movement is hampered until the wind shifts and blows the sound back out, but that’s part of water management in Hyde County, or really on the peninsula,” Davis said. “Whether the water body is the Pungo River, the Intracoastal Waterway, the Pamlico Sound, or Lake Mattamuskeet, the whole idea is to try to get the sediment trapped somewhere before it hits that water. And as the water slowly move through wetlands, the slower you can move the water, the more time it has for the sediment to fall out, and the more what you’re sending to the water bodies is mostly just water.”

What is important, she added, is that all the projects’ stakeholders are engaged and involved — and patient.

“They’re big projects, but they’re also projects that should have decades of value. The projects don’t have to be perfect,” she said, adding that every challenge that is addressed at the time makes a difference. “Because the needs are now, and they will be in the near term and the long term, and the wind still blows the sound out.”

North Carolina Maritime Museums officials are bringing back the overnight tour of wildlife refuges and seashores throughout Pamlico, Hyde and Dare counties to observe wintering waterfowl.

The Coastal Culture and Waterfowl Watching Excursion, a two-day adventure through the wildlife refuges and seashores in Eastern North Carolina, will be offered Jan. 8-9, 2025, and again Dec. 9-10, 2025, through the system’s Beaufort facility.

The program had been on hiatus for the past four years primarily because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Taking place mostly outdoors, museum guides will travel with participants throughout Pamlico, Hyde and Dare counties to observe wintering waterfowl.

“This is a unique opportunity to see some species of birds that are only in North Carolina for a limited amount of time each year,” Museum Education Curator Benjamin Wunderly said in a statement. “There’s great diversity in the winter waterfowl we see, everything from large tundra swans to small diving ducks like buffleheads.”

Participants under 18 must be accompanied by an adult, and is not recommended for children under 12.

The fee is $95 each, or $85.50 for members of the nonprofit Friends of the Museum, program sponsor. The fee covers the guided tour and transportation by museum van for the overnight adventure. Meals and hotel accommodations are the responsibility of individual participants.

Seating is limited and advance registration is required. To register, visit ncmaritimemuseumbeaufort.com or call 252-504-7758.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Marine Fisheries Artificial Reef Program seeks public input and project advisers for the next five years of ocean reef enhancements.

The state Artificial Reef Program is looking to complete one project per year, for a total of five projects, one in each of the following coastal regions:

• Outer Banks
• Raleigh Bay
• Northern Onslow Bay
• Southern Onslow Bay
• Long Bay

Regional advisers are needed for each project to recommend materials and reef sites for enhancements. The division takes over for all other project phases, including securing state and federal permits, administering funds, awarding contracts and deployment verification.

Officials said the specific order of enhancements will be determined by material and stockpile availability, division staff obligations and timing of the most recent enhancement in the region. The enhancements will occur on established ocean reef sites within 20 nautical miles of shore.

Materials and deployment for the projects will be funded through an annual $500,000 Coastal Recreational Fishing License grant, but advisers are encouraged to offer matching contributions such as funding, materials and staging areas. Any reef material contributions must meet division specifications for acceptable materials, such as concrete pipe, concrete rubble, steel-hulled vessels.

Eligible recommendations for projects will be chosen based on scope and merit, need, material suitability and matching contributions.

Potential project advisers should complete the online recommendation form by Dec. 15, 2024. Projects will be selected by Jan. 10, 2025. Selected advisors will be notified following project selection.

For more information, email Jordan Byrum at jordan.byrum@deq.nc.gov or call 252-515-5481.

Of the nearly $18 million in grants being awarded through the Parks and Recreation Trust Fund, about $1.5 million will go to projects in Chowan, Hyde and Brunswick counties.

The Parks and Recreation Authority, during its meeting Aug. 23, approved the $17.9 million in grants from two different funding sources for 46 parks and recreation projects across the state, the governor’s office announced Thursday.

The selections were made from 40 applications from local governments requesting more than $15.1 million from the Parks and Recreation Trust Fund. Of those, 23 were chosen to receive a total of more than $9.5 million.

A separate source of funding administered through the Parks and Recreation Trust Fund called the Accessible Parks Grant program was appropriated $12.5 million in the 2023 budget to provide matching grants for projects to benefit people living with disabilities. All 23 applicants were selected for the first round of funding, which totals more than $8.3 million.

Two projects on the coast were selected to receive from Parks and Recreation Trust Fund $500,000 each, the maximum that can be awarded for a single project. Awardees must match funds at least dollar-for-dollar for the grant amount.

In Sunset Beach, the funds will go to develop a new public open space, the Majestic Oaks Park, and in Hyde County, the grant is to go to build a sports field, the Brandon Marshall Ball Field Complex.

Two projects in Chowan County were chosen for the Accessible Parks grants. Bennett’s Mill Pond Park phase 1 was selected to receive $134,619, and Edenton was awarded $391,437 for accessibility updates to the town’s Morgan Park.

“These awards through the Parks and Recreation Trust Fund and the Accessible Parks Grant will bring tremendous impact to communities across North Carolina by providing more parks, more trails and more accessible recreation,” Gov. Roy Cooper said in the announcement.

A second round of funding with more than $4 million available through the Accessible Parks Grant will open in September.

An ongoing lawsuit has put on hold both the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s plan to treat the toxic blue-green algae in Lake Mattamuskeet and state funding for the project.

On behalf of Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club, the Southern Environmental Law Center challenged on May 20 the service’s decision “to allow the experimental use of an algaecide identified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as toxic to birds in the 40,000-acre Lake Mattamuskeet” which has shown declining water quality since the early 1990s.

The 50,180-acre Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1934, providing habitat for hundreds of species of birds and is part of the Atlantic Flyway. The lake once filled with seagrass had none by 2017, and the declining submerged aquatic vegetation has led to poor water quality and clarity and contributed to large blooms of phytoplankton and cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.

The North Carolina Collaboratory, under the direction of the General Assembly, in July 2022 awarded a $5 million contract to the vendor, BlueGreen Technologies, which has an office in Pennsylvania, to test out its Lake Guard Oxy product on 400 acres of the lake. Based on results of several toxicity tests, the maximum single dosage rate to be used was to be 50 pounds per acre of Lake Guard Oxy, according to the service.

Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney and Leader of the Wildlife Program Ramona McGee explained to Coastal Review that Mattamuskeet Refuge “is a revered bird sanctuary, so we’re very concerned about the impacts to birds from this toxic algaecide. This is a plan that resulted from the North Carolina General Assembly appropriating funds to the Collaboratory to conduct an experimental test of an algaecide. And for whatever reason, they selected Lake Mattamuskeet as their test site.”

The lawsuit is asking the court to block the plan until the Fish and Wildlife Service “conducts a full analysis that protects the mission and purpose of the wildlife refuge and takes a hard look at the toxic algaecide’s harms and the available alternatives,” the center said in its announcement.

The service, in a response to the lawsuit filed May 29, states that because of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s May 16 press release announcing that the “project would be ‘starting on June 1,’ Plaintiffs initiated this lawsuit and sought a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction. However, as a result of the lawsuit, the Collaboratory has halted funding and put the Project on hold due to this pending lawsuit.”

McGee with the law center explained that not all details of how the company was selected for the study are known.

“What we do know is that BlueGreen Technologies registered lobbyists in the North Carolina General Assembly, and then subsequently the North Carolina General Assembly appropriated funds for this study. The vendor had to meet very specific criteria, and those criteria” match up with BlueGreen’s Lake Guard Oxy product and, “kind of unsurprisingly,” when the request for bids went out for this product, BlueGreen won with its Lake Guard Oxy product.

“After that, through whatever decision-making process, they selected Lake Mattamuskeet as the test site and again, Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge is a bird sanctuary, and this algaecide is toxic to birds,” McGee said.

A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service representative told Coastal Review that the service does not comment on active or pending litigation.

Emergency relief

The Fish and Wildlife Service released in March its final environmental assessment for the cyanobacteria treatment pilot study, and not long after, on May 16, the NCDEQ issued the press release stating that the department, under state water quality laws, had granted a certificate of coverage for the project to move forward as early as June 1.

“Because of that, the plaintiffs, the conservation groups here, went to the court seeking emergency relief,” McGee said, referring to the complaint filed May 20, motion filed May 24 that sought a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction, as well as the court-ordered, expedited hearing which took place May 31.

The Fish and Wildlife Service, the defendants in this case, indicated in their response brief in opposition to SELC’s motion dated May 29 that the Collaboratory had temporarily “halted funding and put the Project on hold due to this pending lawsuit,” but that funding could resume at any time.

The service added that, despite the Department of Environmental Quality’s announcement that the trial study could start on June 1, there were several steps that needed to be taken before the first treatment could be applied. Those steps could take around 10 weeks to complete.

SELC, in its May 30 reply to the defendant’s response brief, said its clients welcomed the new information and agreed to withdraw their request for a temporary restraining order, but not their request for a preliminary injunction.

“Because, as Defendants note, the UNC Collaboratory could resume funding the project at any time and set the project in motion, the Conservation Groups maintain their request for a preliminary injunction,” according to the reply.

McGee said that now, because of the new timeline, “we’re back to briefing.”

This means that the defendants will need to respond to the the law center’s May 30 reply by June 21, and then the groups would have to answer within 10 days, McGee explained.

This is still a request. “We’re still asking, at this point, the court to issue an order ensuring that defendants won’t move forward with the toxic algaecide experiment during the pendency of the lawsuit, but it’s at a slightly slower pace than it was before, given that defendants have basically assured us and the court that they’re not going to be applying the algaecide in the next couple of months,” McGee said.

The Collaboratory, in a prepared statement in response to Coastal Review’s query, said the vendor was selected in accordance with state law and that an academic team from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill was working with the vendor to gather and assess baseline water quality data from Lake Mattamuskeet.

“The baseline data collection is ongoing, and the Collaboratory has made it clear to the vendor that subsequent phases of the project, including cost reimbursements for treatment activities, will depend on having all necessary State and federal authorizations in place. The continued collection of these data are important to better understand the impacts and effects of harmful algal blooms (HABs) in aquatic environments throughout our State,” according to the statement.

‘Evil plot of a comic book villain’

Plaintiffs Sierra Club North Carolina Chapter Acting State Director Erin Carey and Jane Davenport, senior attorney at Defenders of Wildlife, remain concerned about the algaecide study.

“An experimental algaecide that’s toxic to birds, targeted for use in a federal bird sanctuary, so a private company can collect proprietary information for its own profits –this whole thing feels like the evil plot of a comic book villain,” Carey said. “Common sense, public outcry, and even long-established mission priorities have failed to stop this misaligned and destructive project; our lawsuit is the logical next step. The stewardship inherent to the management of our preserves is paramount to the protection of thousands of species. We are proud to stand with our partners to protect the birds and other wildlife of Lake Mattamuskeet.”

Davenport reiterated that Defenders of Wildlife continues “to be very concerned about using Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge as a testing ground for an algaecide known to be toxic to birds. We are grateful that we have more time to fully lay out the legal issues with the Fish and Wildlife Service’s short-circuited environmental analysis that treated the experiment as a done deal.”

‘Little risk of negative impact to birds’

The EPA said in March 2023 that Lake Guard Oxy “is toxic to birds. Do not apply this product or allow it to drift to blooming crops or weeds while pollinating insects are actively visiting the area.”

The environmental assessment the Fish and Wildlife Service released in March 2024, notes that the statement, “toxic to birds,” on the label of Lake Guard Oxy, “must be considered in the context of the use of the product,” but concluded that the expected benefits offset the risk.

“The Service believes that use of Lake Guard Oxy in the manner and location in which it is proposed will have little risk of negative impact to birds. The potential long-term benefits of the proposed action for birds and refuge habitats outweighs the potential for negative impacts.”

A BlueGreen Water Technologies spokesperson told Coastal Review Monday that the company “has safely remediated water bodies around the globe using its Lake Guard Oxy technology to improve ecosystems for waterfowl and wildlife.”

While the EPA’s product label “advises for potential toxicity of the active ingredient under a variety of conditions on land and water, BlueGreen’s protocol is specific to harmful algal blooms and our dosage rates for Lake Mattamuskeet are below toxic thresholds as confirmed through proactive testing on waterfowl,” they said.

The product “was developed as a ‘leave no trace’ protocol for use in threatened ecosystems battling toxic, harmful algae blooms, like Lake Mattamuskeet. The peroxide-based product is fully biodegradable and breaks down into water and oxygen molecules. Compared to other peroxide-based treatments, Lake Guard Oxy has been found to provide higher efficacy at much lower doses due to the floating time-release formulation,” they continued.

Discover more coastal celebrations and programs at Earth Day 2024. First held in 1970 to bring awareness to environmental issues, Earth Day takes place annually on April 22.

Organizers have scheduled educational talks, walks and more for the first Ocracoke Earth Day weekend celebration taking place April 19-21.

Ocracoke Alive Inc., a nonprofit organization that encourages and sponsors cultural, artistic, educational and environmental activities, has been working with area groups to coordinate the three days of festivities.

During the three days there will be nature walks, history talks, gardening, nature crafts, live music, stargazing, a village litter cleanup, and informative discussions and presentations about sustainability and solutions. The weekend ends with a community beach fire at Ocracoke’s lifeguard beach.

“We want to strike a balance between celebrating the beauty around us, while also offering discussions about the threats to the coastal environment and learning about practical and sustainable solutions to these threats,” Ocracoke Alive Director David Tweedie said in a release.

Keynote speaker for the weekend is Reide Corbett, executive director of East Carolina University’s Coastal Studies Institute. He is scheduled to present “North Carolina’s Changing Coast: Sea level, Storms, and People” at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Ocracoke Community Center.

Corbett leads an interdisciplinary team of faculty and staff that integrates the fields of engineering, maritime history, natural, and social sciences.

The celebration kicks off at 3:45 p.m. Friday, April 19, with an Earth Day student parade from Ocracoke School library to the Ocracoke Commons at the Island Inn property.

A full schedule is available on Ocracoke Alive’s website, including the following:

Friday, April 19

3:45 p.m. Ocracoke Earth Day Parade from Ocracoke Library to Ocracoke Commons. Those interested in participating should assemble at the library at 3:30 p.m.

4 p.m. Ocracoke Earth Day Welcome/Tour of Island Inn Commons.

5:30 p.m. Meet your Ocracoke fisherman and tour the Ocracoke Seafood Co.

7 p.m. Friday Night Concert featuring Bob and Jeanie Zentz, Deepwater Theater.

8:45 p.m. Stargazing and Celestial Navigation, Lifeguard beach. Bring binoculars if you want.

Saturday, April 20

8 a.m. – Bird walk with Peter Vankevich, NPS Campground parking lot.

8 a.m. – Help planting and beautifying at the British Cemetery, Sundae Horn.

10 a.m. – Trash to Treasure with Ella Ralston, Ocracoke Library

11 a.m. – Student Presentation: Surveying Stream Watch Presentation with Ocracoke eighth grade class, Karen Teklinsky, Community Center.

Noon – Latino Community Migrations to North Carolina, Daniel Velásquez, Community Center.

Noon – Nature and Garden Crafts for Families, Sundae Horn, Ocracoke Community Library.

1 p.m. Local Food and Resilience in Eastern NC: Past, Present, and Future, Carla Norwood and Gabriel Cumming, Community Center.

1 p.m. Trash pickup on Ocracoke Beach.

2 p.m. Ocracoke Ponies: Past and Present, Ocracoke Preservation Society Porch Talk.

3 p.m. Panel Discussion on Ocracoke Sustainability and Solutions Bevin Hardy and Heidi Smith, Community Center.

5 p.m. Green Energy Solutions Gustave Younggren, Community Center.

7 p.m. Keynote Speaker Reide Corbett from Coastal Studies Institute.

8 p.m. Earth Day Open Mic and Dance Party, Deepwater Theater.

Sunday, April 21

8 a.m. Yoga at the Community Square Docks with Desiree Adams.

9 a.m. Island Gardening & Medicinal Herbs with Kate McNally and Joseph Ramunni, Ocracoke Garden Center.

10 a.m. Ocracoke Fig Talk, Sundae Horn & Chester Lynn, Ocracoke Preservation Society.

11 a.m. Shores of Resilience: Navigating Climate Change in Coastal Communities, Bevin Hardy, Community Center.

Noon: Island Pollinators with Denise Deacon, Community Center.

Noon: Trash to Treasure with Ella Ralston, Ocracoke Library.

1:30 p.m. Nature Walk and history talk at Springer’s Point with Kane Lawhorn and Philip Howard.

2 p.m. “Trashion” Show, Ella Ralston, Ocracoke Library.

3:30 p.m. Community Beach Bonfire and Smores, and Earth Day Ocracoke farewell (Rain location: Community Center).

• Webpage.
• Online schedule.
• Printable schedule.

The public is invited to an event next week to celebrate planned renovations of the more-than-century-old Mattamuskeet Lodge.

The event is set for 2 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 13, on the lodge grounds at 1 Mattamuskeet Road, Swan Quarter.

The $6.5 million, state-funded initial phase of renovations is part of a long-term plan to turn the lodge into an educational and event center.

Related: Hyde County agency’s future home may be key to saving it

The lodge on the state’s largest natural lake is part of the Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge.

The lake itself was drained in the early 20^th century so that its bed could be farmed, a short-lived venture. The lodge housed the pumps used to drain the lake.

SWAN QUARTER — Nearly a quarter-century after historic Mattamuskeet Lodge shut its doors, an enterprising new plan is underway to reopen a reimagined version of Hyde County’s community gathering spot.

Efforts in the last 16 years to determine a sustainable plan to operate the 109-year-old state-owned lodge have confounded the county, despite assistance from nonprofits, private businesses and model business plans created at two state universities.

“We’ve been trying to crack the code for so long to find how we can open it and how it can be sustainable,” Hyde County Manager Kris Noble told Coastal Review late last week.

As it turns out, the answer to reviving Mattamuskeet Lodge was right under her nose — or more accurately, in the same government center building where she works: the Hyde County Cooperative Extension.

When Noble took a closer look at the University of North Carolina’s and East Carolina University’s respective business plans, it became apparent that what was missing was economies of scale.

“I started realizing that the number one issue of being sustainable was really the staff cost to operate the facility,” she said. “I started brainstorming, and I came up with this idea that we would house Hyde County’s Cooperative Extension agency within the lodge, and they will operate the lodge.”

Not only could the Cooperative Extension readily relocate to the lodge that’s about 10 miles away, Noble said it would be a perfect fit with its model. The extension provides rural community support, services and programming that is focused on the same inherent features as Mattamuskeet Lodge: agriculture, fishing, hunting, history, water and the natural environment.

The North Carolina Cooperative Extension is a state agency, and county cooperative extensions are partnerships with the state. Operating framework and procedures come from the state, but program costs for the counties are split with the state.

Hyde’s Cooperative Extension is enthusiastically onboard with the move to the lodge, Noble said.

With the go-ahead from all stakeholders, the county led development of the proposed restoration plan, and presented it to state lawmakers. In early January, the Council of State agreed to lease the building for 30 years to the county for $1. The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission would continue to oversee the site and partner with the county. A new nonprofit partner, the Mattamuskeet Lodge Society, has been created to support the restoration and develop public awareness of the lodge’s natural and cultural heritage.

Meanwhile, the county is in the process of reviewing a draft lease from the state, Noble said. Once that is finalized, $6.5 million in state funds are in hand for Phase I of the restoration, with the goal of transforming the lodge into an educational and event center, with a museum and gift shop on the ground level.

“And after we complete that design and engineering, we’ll be able to provide a better cost estimate for completion of the entire project and a better timeline,” Noble said.

What is already known, she added, is that the 14 bedrooms available in the past are not going to be part of the building’s future.

“There will not be lodging in the lodge,” Noble said.

According to the plan, “The Mattamuskeet Lodge, proposed restoration initiative,” the project’s final phase is estimated to cost $14.4 million and include installation of electrical, mechanical and wastewater systems, as well as landscaping and parking improvements. Furnishings, fixtures, and equipment are estimated to cost an additional $2.15 million.

While recognizable statewide thanks to an iconic photograph often used in North Carolina tourism brochures, Mattamuskeet Lodge never has been a major visitor attraction. Still, its cultural and historic value makes it a significant asset to the state, and a cherished place in the rural community.

“The Lodge will be the center of Hyde County’s natural heritage celebration, highlighting over 400 years of history as well as the living natural heritage,” the plan said.

“Local farmers, commercial fishermen, wildlife guides, Civil Rights and Native American experts, and artists will keep this natural heritage alive through their use of the Lodge.”

An engineering feat

Located within the 50,000-acre Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge, the lodge was originally built in 1915 as a pumping station to drain Lake Mattamuskeet, the state’s largest natural lake, to use its richly organic bed as farmland. At the time, the facility was acclaimed as an engineering feat and the world’s largest pumping station. Despite its razzle-dazzle, the operation was unsuccessful and eventually abandoned.

Ownership of the 40,000-acre lake and the three-story pumphouse were eventually transferred to the federal government, which in 1934 established the refuge to protect migratory wildfowl and the lake’s environment.

The refuge and the Civil Conservation Corps remodeled the nearly 15,000-square-foot pumphouse into a 38-room hunting lodge and refuge headquarters, according to Mattamuskeet Lodge’s 1980 listing on the National Register of Historic Places. The plant’s tall chimney, the listing said, was transformed into a 120-foot observation tower with a stairway.

Opened in 1937, the hunting lodge operated until 1974. But the building was still used for numerous special community events, local weddings and school proms until it was closed in 2000 because of structural concerns.

By 2006, the lodge was in disrepair, and the federal government handed it and its 6.25-acre footprint over to the state Department of Cultural Resources with the idea that the agency would be able to restore and renovate the lodge.

Between 2008 and 2010, $5.7 million was appropriated for projects that included demolition and removal of hazardous materials, replacement of concrete and waterproofing on the lower level, installation of new steel building columns, replacement of windows, repair and re-coating of the exterior, augmenting floor joists and installation of additional wind-bracing components.

In 2016, the lodge was transferred, as planned, to the Wildlife Resources Commission. Four years later, a $300,000 roof restoration was completed, including removal of all the original clay tiles, partial replacement of the wood decking, installation of a water shield, and replacement of the tiles.

Currently, repair and restoration of the 100-year-old observation tower, originally the smokestack on the coal-fired pumphouse, is being planned, with funding from a $1 million appropriation in 2022.

“That observation cab on top has a lot of corrosion,” said Brad Kleinmaier, capital projects coordinator with the Wildlife Resources Commission. Windows have also been damaged.

“We will reinforce the tower so it’s more wind-resistant,” Kleinmaier said.

While the two university studies and discussions of possible public-private partnerships couldn’t make the operation’s math work, the new plan solved the elusive sustainability equation by tapping existing budgets and resources to cover costs. It also added various new pots of money, including profits from the gift shop.

“The business model incorporates county in-kind contributions supported by revenue generated by county programs and … event rentals, programs, shop sales, and fundraisers to fund operational expenses and program expansion,” ad detailed in the plan. “Additional revenue is anticipated through philanthropy and grants earmarked for the preservation and operation of National Historic Sites.”

Once the renovated lodge is reopened, it’s expected to add $8 million to $24 million annually to the Hyde County, the plan said.

Although Lake Mattamuskeet has suffered from water quality issues in recent years, scientists are in the process of implementing a comprehensive restoration plan at the lake. But the lake and its surrounding landscape have maintained its serene magic and unique natural beauty. The refuge is home to large populations of black bear and deer, thousands of waterfowl and other wildlife.

Proposed cooperative extension programming at the lodge, such as storytelling, art classes, and local displays on farming and history, and potential Wildlife Resources Commission educational programs involving hunting, fishing and conservation, could dovetail with refuge activities such as kayaking, hiking, bicycling and birdwatching.

To Noble, a Hyde County native, restoration of the lodge will not only restore what was the beloved centerpiece of community life, it will also reinvigorate the rural county.

“We want this to enhance and promote all of our local businesses,” she said.

With a population of 4,589, according to the 2020 census, Hyde County is second least populated and one of the poorest of North Carolina’s 100 counties.

“Of course, our number one goal is to restore and reopen the lodge,” Noble said.

“Our very strong secondary goal was the economic stimulus that this will create for our communities.”

SWAN QUARTER — With a lot of nets, some electric stunning, and help from a few “Judas” fish with transmitters, contractors this month are about to launch a roundup to remove a million pounds of invasive common carp from the impaired waters of Lake Mattamuskeet.

The $1 million project, funded by a Bipartisan Infrastructure Law grant, is a critical phase of the ongoing and multifaceted conservation effort to restore the state’s largest freshwater lake. But with an estimated 1 million carp in the lake, weighing an average 4 pounds each, the removal will leave about 75% of the carp to continue its destructive dominance of the ecosystem, at least until another project can be approved and funded.

“This is going to be a continual issue that we have to address through maintenance efforts once this large-scale removal takes place,” Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge Manager Kendall Smith recently told Coastal Review. “But our goal here is to crash the population of carp. They’re already stressed living in the environment that they do.”

The draft environmental assessment for the carp removal project released in March 2021 had called for removal of 99% of the carp. Although that is not possible yet, Smith said, the refuge fully intends to follow through with carp control.

Situated in the center of rural mainland Hyde County, Lake Mattamuskeet, totaling 63 square miles, is 18 miles long and 7 miles wide. At 40,276 acres, it spans the majority of the 50,180-acre refuge and is remarkably shallow — just 2 to 3 feet deep. Since the 1990s, the condition of the lake has declined precipitously, and the overabundance of carp, which create turbidity in the water, is one of the major contributors to the problem.

“So as bottom feeders, they’re constantly moving along the bottom, sort of filtering through that muck,” Smith said about the carp. “It keeps it suspended in the water column.”

Today, the lake, once a major overwintering destination for thousands of waterfowl, is devoid of submerged aquatic vegetation, lacks water clarity and is plagued with algal blooms from high nutrient levels. Once plentiful largemouth bass, crappie, catfish, sunfish and striped bass have been crowded out by carp or depleted by poor water conditions and lack of food. Many of the waterfowl now visit nearby bird impoundments to feed rather than stopping at the lake.

Minnesota-based contractor WSB came to the refuge in early December to develop a plan and to catch some of the fish to implant transmitters, Smith said.

“The idea there is carp congregate in the wintertime,” he explained. “And by inserting some transmitters and releasing those fish back into the lake, we can track them later to locate those congregations.” Thus, the fish with transmitters serve as a kind of “Judas” by betraying the location of the other carp.

Smith said that most of the carp will be caught in large-haul seine nets that capture fish from top to bottom in the water column. Other species trapped in the net will be released, and the carp will be loaded onto boats and trucks.

Carp removal had been identified in the Lake Mattamuskeet Watershed Restoration Plan as an important part of an interconnected process to restore water quality at the lake. The 2018 plan, a partnership between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, Hyde County, the North Carolina Coastal Federation and local stakeholders, also recommended science-based approaches to reduction of nutrients in the lake and submerged vegetation restoration.

A similar removal effort in the 1940s and 1950s successfully restored water clarity by removing significant numbers of carp with large-haul seines, baited traps and pound nets, according to a Nov. 13 U.S. Fish and Wildlife press release. More recent efforts employed in other water bodies have used what is known as the modified unified method, which herds fish into large seines. “Once netted, carp are extracted from the lake,” the release said. “WSB will utilize a combination of these removal methods.”

About three years ago, the refuge installed barriers on the tide gates in the four canals connecting the sound to the lake, Smith said. The barriers, vertical slats spaced 2 inches apart, keep adult carp from coming into the lake to breed, but allow other fish and crabs to get through.

Although Lake Mattamuskeet possesses a serene, even mystical beauty, it has not been a pristine environment for a century or more.

“Unlike most naturally formed shallow lakes, Lake Mattamuskeet has been anthropogenically manipulated multiple times throughout its history, resulting in a highly altered morphology and hydrology,” April Dawn Lamb wrote in her 2020 thesis for her graduate degree at North Carolina State University, Informing Common Carp Removal and Submerged Aquatic Vegetation Restoration in Lake Mattamuskeet. “Specifically, repeated attempts to drain the lake for agricultural use reduced its original surface area significantly, the dredging of four outfall canals connected the lake to the estuarine Pamlico Sound, and the construction of Highway 94 in 1940 split the lake into two distinct basins.

“Cumulatively, these events have increased nutrient availability to the main lake, contributed to historical shifts in the primary producer community, and facilitated the development of alternative stable states which persisted until the 1990’s,” she wrote.

Lamb’s research, which provided the carp population estimates for the refuge, found that despite their large numbers, the fish are not thriving. “Broadly, we find that carp in Lake Mattamuskeet are young, fast-growing, and short-lived,” she said.

Most fish were less than 4 pounds and survive about four years; healthy populations of common carp weigh up to 8 pounds and live as long as 20 years. The lake’s high temperatures and pH levels in the summer likely contribute to their relatively puny size and high mortality rate, she added. 

Along with a team of subcontractors, WSB, after obtaining the proper permits, is to track the fish, set up various nets, catch the fish, sort the fish, find different markets for the fish, pack and transport the fish, help dispose of unusable fish, among numerous other tasks, all within 18 months.

“We have to surgically implant high-frequency radio tags in the carp, then construct a series of receivers across Mattamuskeet, so we can track those radio-type fish in real time using satellites,” Tony Havranek, WSB’s project manager, said.

So far, the team has inserted 39 fish radio tags, with one kept out to determine the range of detection, deployed seine nets and removed about 900 carp. Havranek had also led operations for the fish logistics company, Erie, Michigan-based FisH20, a subcontractor tasked with transporting the fish to the markets.

Other subcontractors include Four Peaks Environmental Science & Data Solutions, based in Wenatchee, Washington, which will assist with radio telemetry and tracking and Wabasha, Minnesota-based Adams Boat Service, which has worked on several similar state and federal projects in the Midwest.

The tags are about the size of an AA battery in diameter and length, Havranek said. 

“We physically push that tag into the carp, and then we thread a wire antenna through the side of the fish and suture the fish up,” he said. The sutures dissolve, and the flexible wire antenna doesn’t inhibit the fish. The battery power source has a tiny circuit board on top. The contractors have handheld receivers to the stationary receivers.

 “And then based on the amplitude of the signal or the strength of it, the receiver can can tell approximately where that radio-tagged fish is at in the lake, and then the receiver itself uses a cell modem to send that information back to us,” he said.

Even though “cell service is brutal” at Mattamuskeet, Havranek said, the amount of data is small enough to transmit.

“So I can see it in St. Paul and my partners at Four Peaks in Washington State can see it together in real time,” he said.

A limited seasonal market is available for live carp in New York and Detroit, he said, adding that contractors will also investigate more potential markets along the East Coast. But the bony, somewhat undersized fish is not a popular menu item. They will also be looking for markets for fresh or dead carp, such as for animal feed, fish meal or fertilizer.

“But to be able to even sell carp on that market, especially when you start thinking about the freight costs involved, yeah, it’s really tough,” Havranek said. “We’ve got both live trucks and refrigerated trucks that we can utilize to move fish. But again, the more local places that I can bring those — I thought about crab bait or other types of bait that could be made out of the carp — it’d be really beneficial for a project like this because it can reduce the overall cost based on shipping.”

Fish carcasses could potentially also be used by farmers here, he said. Whatever can’t be marketed would be composted at suitable sites, potentially including uplands on the refuge. 

Even though the contract is just for removal of the fish, Havranek said he couldn’t “in good conscience” not help the refuge understand the current carp population by providing updated information, such as the current average weight and length. For instance, he said that from recent sampling it appears that the carp are larger and heavier than what old data had shown. 

There is an ecological tipping point — a management threshold — of about 89 pounds per acre of carp, Havranek said. And based on the old data, that would be about 140 pounds of carp per acre in Lake Mattamuskeet.

Smith, the refuge manager, agreed that the contractor’s work will be invaluable in making more effective management decisions, especially with their updated data and their years of experience.

“I think that with this trapping effort we’ll learn a lot more about the population levels and that’s something that this contractor typically does on other lakes and projects,” Smith said, adding that he expects that WSB will make multiple visits during the 18-month contract period. “It’ll be a very adaptive process as they see how successful they are with the initial efforts … and certainly learning what works best and what locations are most productive as they go.”

In recommendations made in her thesis, Lamb suggested that a “suite” of management tactics should be employed at various life stages of the carp, including the canal gate barriers that the refuge has already installed. Other measures to limit repopulation Lamb recommended would be to address potential nursery areas in impoundments and irrigation canals surrounding the lake, add predator fish like bluegill that eat the hundreds of thousands of eggs the carp produce every breeding season, which the refuge has already started doing, and potentially create and manage permanent barriers in canals to trap carp for easier removal.

“To decrease the biomass of adult fish in the lake,” she added, “we recommend conducting yearly carp removals.”

The biological rub is that carp — like another famously resilient species, the coyote — may compensate for reduced population numbers by stepping up their reproduction.

But Havranek said that if their removal project is successful and the refuge implements the other management tactics, the population cycle may be able to be stretched out over a number of years.

“All things being equal, I think it’d be really wise to at least be out on that water body just doing some simple surveys maybe once every three years, something like that,” he said. “That way you can be somewhat proactive in the management piece.”

Whether or not carp actually reproduce more after removal is not necessarily evident to Havranek. But it is clear, he said, that “they can take a beating” by managing to survive stressors in Mattamuskeet that many fish could not — low oxygen, high temperatures, high algae content.

“And they’re still going to be able to find food in some way, shape or form (although) some of them out there look pretty scrawny,” Havranek said. “So I’m sure that they’re somewhat being impacted, but they’ll always just keep coming back.”

Reprinted from Ocracoke Observer

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and a statewide stay-at-home order, Hyde County has begun work on how to safely reopen the county, said Kris Noble, Hyde County’s manager, in a recent interview.

“This week, we are beginning with the county’s health care workers, the health department, medical center and EMS as well as our partners like the Cross Creek Health Center and home care hospice services,” she said. “We’ll be looking at the plans other counties are doing and the guidance of the state to see what preparations will be required.”

As for how and when Ocracoke will be reopened, she said much will be contingent on what the state and Dare County do.

Following Gov. Roy Cooper’s press conference Thursday, Noble said there will be more information regarding access to the island by the close of business on Friday.

Noble said there is a plan in place should there be an outbreak of the pandemic in the county.

As of Thursday in North Carolina there are 7,608 cases of COVID-19 in 93 counties with 253 related fatalities and 486 hospitalizations.

Hyde County is one of the seven out of the 100 counties that has not had a reported case. The others are nearby Camden and along the western border: Avery, Graham, Madison, Swain and Yancey.

On March 17, Dare County closed its borders to visitors. Hyde soon followed and restricted access to the mainland and Ocracoke.

Dare County officials on Wednesday released a plan that will allow phased entry of nonresident Outer Banks property owners beginning May 4.

The Dare County Control Group has also extended the Stay at Home order for Dare County until May 22, meaning no visitors will be allowed back until at least then.

Masks will now be required in stores such as pharmacies and grocery stores, as well.

OCRACOKE – Storm-driven tide crashing on to your waterfront yard is bad enough, but Hyde County Manager Bill Rich saw visions of doom when a 45-foot boat in Silver Lake headed straight toward his house.

“It looked like the Titanic was coming through my bedroom,” Rich recounted in an interview last week.

As fortune had it, Rich’s home was spared impact from one of numerous close encounters with unmoored orphaned vessels in the harbor, an increasing problem in the small resort community on the southern tip of the Outer Banks.

On Monday evening, the Hyde County Board of Commissioners unanimously passed an ordinance that prohibits abandonment of vessels in Silver Lake, in what Rich characterized as an important first step in addressing what has become a dangerous and ugly blight in the otherwise picturesque harbor.

“Every time there’s a wind of 30 mph or higher, something breaks loose, “ he said. “Usually it’s a derelict boat that no one’s been on for months.”

Under a 2015 state law, the county was given the authority to pass an ordinance that would consider a vessel to be abandoned if it was anchored for more than 30 days without permission within a six-month period. The definition also includes sunken vessels or those in danger of sinking, as well as boats that create a hazard to navigation or an immediate danger to other vessels.

Three other coastal counties – Dare, New Hanover and Brunswick – have also adopted similar ordinances. But abandoned vessels have become a costly and complex issue that nearly every waterfront community in North Carolina – and nationwide – is grappling to address.

In a report published in March 2017 by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a survey of 28 coastal states found that 18 of those states reported more than 5,600 abandoned or derelict vessels between 2013 and 2016. Of those, only 3,000 had been removed.

North Carolina does not monitor the number of abandoned vessels in its waterways.

For Hyde County, Silver Lake Harbor is a popular destination for recreational sailors and boaters, especially in the summer. But in the last 15 years or so, Rich said, more people have been using their vessels – usually sailboats – to live on.  At the end of the season, or when the weather is dangerous, some people have moved away, leaving behind their empty boat anchored in the harbor.

The ordinance is not meant to keep people from living on their vessels, the county manager said. It is meant to discourage irresponsible ownership.

“What we’re not going to have is people using their boats as a motel and leaving them all winter long,” he said.

In just the last two months, six abandoned vessels broke free of their moorings, he said. One unfettered sailboat ended its journey at the pier in front of Ride the Wind Surf Shop, another landed by the Berkeley dock. Both of those vessels sunk. Another boat broke loose at the National Park Service docks.  After ensuring that they were unclaimed, the county retrieved each vessel, crushed them and hauled them away, at a cost to the county of $1,500 to $2,000 each.

In addition, Rich said, a fourth vessel was towed away from its resting spot at a private dock it damaged.  Two derelict vessels remain – one aground on private property, the other snagged on a mooring ball.

Eventually, Hyde plans to draft another ordinance more tailored to its needs and circumstances, and ask the legislature to approve it, Rich said.

Steve Wilson, chairman of the Ocracoke Planning Advisory Board and an island native, said that part of the problem with abandoned vessels is that their registrations are often outdated, making it difficult to track down the responsible party. Under the ordinance, the county follows state law that requires the abandoned vessel’s owner to be notified, when possible. Typically, an owner is determined through documentation and the identification number on the vessel’s hull. Under state law, the last registered owner is considered the owner, although it is rebuttable. Regardless of who removes and disposes of the abandoned vessel, or contracts for it, the person who removes the boat is responsible for collecting the associated fees.

The owner is responsible for all costs of removal, towing, storage, disposal and/or site restoration. And if the owner can’t be determined, the taxpayer ultimately foots the bill.

Some people who live on their boats don’t leave the harbor, Wilson said, so they don’t bother to renew their registrations. It’s also not uncommon for boats to be informally sold and resold without re-registering them.

“So you end up with a boat that has a confused ownership,” Wilson said. “It has no bill of sale, no current title, no current registration.”

Over the years, he said, there have been increasing numbers of  “boats that come here and never leave.” The result, he added, is the harbor at times has been cluttered with vagrant vessels without anchor lights, hindering the access for and safety of transient vessels that want to tie up for the night.

If a boat is docked or anchored and had not been underway, it is unlikely to be checked by law officers with the Coast Guard or the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, which both have certain enforcement power over vessels, he said. And since no insurance is required for boats, documentation is easier to ignore.

Law enforcement personnel with the Wildlife Resources Commission did not respond to several requests seeking further information.

With the new ordinance, any county law enforcement officer or representative of any government agency with jurisdiction has enforcement power, including authorization to board a vessel.

“The bottom line is a lack of responsibility has created a problem for the village, for the transient boaters, for the property owners around the harbor,” Wilson said.

Silver Lake, the more evocative name for the Ocracoke harbor, is considered one of Ocracoke’s most vital resources, he added.

“These abandoned boats have become a detriment to our tourism economy as well as becoming a safety hazard,” Wilson said. “Ocracoke is lenient and tolerant, and we’re not looking to hurt people. We’re just looking for people to take their stuff when they leave.”

Learn More

• Read the ordinance

Last of two parts

ENGELHARD — Hyde County, with its pancake-flat land, pocosin swamps and swarms of bugs, isn’t many peoples’ idea of paradise.

But to those who live, hunt and fish here, there’s no place prettier on Earth.

The Albemarle-Pamlico peninsula, on which the county sits, is rimmed on the east by Croatan and Pamlico sounds. It’s so remote and unpeopled that in the mid-1980s the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service chose it as a site for the reintroduction of the red wolf, an eastern predator that had been driven to the brink of extinction.

Hyde residents tend to be self-sufficient and friendly toward outsiders—as long as the strangers don’t try to tell them how to live. They distrust the federal government and criticize what they consider interference on the part of environmental regulators.

The N.C. Coastal Federation arranged with Wilson Daughtry and his partners to build a major hydrologic restoration project on Lux Farms in northeast Hyde. They entered a bureaucratic labyrinth.

Project Goals

The federation’s goal is to work with farmers to restore the hydrology of ditched and drained land in a manner that both heals the natural system and provides improvements to farming operations. By storing water in diked impoundments, the farmer can have adequate irrigation for crops during the growing season. Drainage water that’s held back for irrigation won’t be pumped into the rich estuaries of Pamlico Sound.

Daughtry also worries that federal agencies will soon require farmers to control the amount of drainage water coming off their fields. “It’s happening already in Florida,” he said. He saw the hydrologic restoration project as a way of getting ahead of the curve — and getting grant money to help foot the bill.

The federation in 2008 received an $80,000 planning grant from the Clean Water Management Trust Fund to model current and historic drainage patterns and design a restoration project on Lux Farms that could be built in phases.

Mike Burchell and his team at N.C. State University designed the project. Photo: NCSU

To design the project, the partners tapped Michael Burchell and a team of engineers at N.C. State University’s Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering. Burchell and company had done the design work at the federation’s restoration project at North River Farms in Carteret County. They worked up a plan to hold drainage water in three reservoirs within Lux Farms. Overflow would seep into a restored historic slough that flowed north toward the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge.

Then in 2009 the bottom fell out.

State budget shortfalls caused the state trust fund to place a hold on grants for all its projects, including the planning for the first phase of Lux Farms.

At the same time, administrative road blocks stalled the acceptance of the project property into the federal Wetlands Reserve Program, which is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. The voluntary program pays easements to landowners who want to protect, restore and enhance wetlands on their property. Enrolling the Lux Farm property into the program was a requirement of the trust fund grant. No construction could move forward until the land was enrolled.

Another obstacle arose when Mike Bryant, the manager of the Alligator River refuge for the U.S Fish & Wildlife Service, questioned whether redirecting water north would harm the refuge’s diverse bottomland swamp forests. Such hydrologic trespass would not be allowed.

“We’ll be putting water back into its natural flow pattern,” said Erin Fleckenstein, a coastal scientist for the federation. “But we do need to be careful not to overwhelm the natural systems on the refuge.”

The design couldn’t be completed without modeling studies to show how much water would be released onto the refuge—and until water quality tests could measure the potential pollutant load.

Word Spreads

Fortunately, word of the Lux Farms project had attracted interest from other Hyde County farmers. Jamin Simmons, manager of Mattamuskeet Ventures Farm, just west of the Lux holdings, contacted the federation to see if a similar project was possible on his land.

Creating habitat for shorebirds became one of the project’s later goal. Photo: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Southeast Atlantic Migratory Bird Office in Columbia had money available for the creation of bird habitat through a program called Partners for Fish and Wildlife. “We were looking to create marsh habitat,” remembered Kendall Smith, biologist for the office.

When the federation approached him about a possible project on Mattamuskeet Ventures, Smith initially didn’t think it would work. “We didn’t need any more habitat for waterfowl in Hyde County,” he said.

But he took another look at the language for the program “and realized it would also work for creating shorebird habitat.”

Within a year work was moving forward on shallow water impoundments on two 300-acre blocks of Mattamuskeet Ventures land. Simmons already had a pump available for the project, and the Fish & Wildlife provided $150,000 for building dikes and contouring the land to create ideal habitat for shorebirds. During the spring and fall migrations, drainage from farm operations would be pumped into the impoundments and held at optimum levels—rather than being funneled into canals for release into local waterways. Overflow from the project would be funneled into adjacent wetlands.

The project moved unusually quickly and was completed in the fall of 2010.

No one could quite believe the federation-farmer partnerships were yielding so much fruit. At a celebratory meeting in the Mattamuskeet Ventures hunting lodge, the two farmers, both wearing bemused smiles, sat looking at federation staff. “If you’d told me five years ago that I’d be working on something with this group,” Daughtry said, “I wouldn’t have believed you.”

Back in Business

The state trust fund in 2010 reinstated the planning grant for the hydrologic restoration project on Lux Farms. The agency also agreed to fund the first phase of the work, allocating $970,000 for the project.

But there was still the delicate matter of working out agreements with adjacent land holders, including the Alligator River refuge.

Modeling by the NCSU engineers had shown that the water seeping onto refuge lands from the project would be filtered by wetlands so thoroughly that its nutrient load would not hurt the refuge ecosystem.

Field surveys also had shown that farm pumping was causing subsidence in the peat soils of the refuge.

“There’s actually a water deficit that’s drying out the peat and causing problems,” said Fleckenstein. “This is an opportunity to rehydrate the swamps. But the amount of water released needs to be carefully monitored to make sure there aren’t any adverse effects.”

Unfortunately, the engineers had also realized that a 300-acre irrigation reservoir planned for Phase 1 would kill the trees in a swamp forest. Daughtry had hoped to flood the area to depths of four feet to provide irrigation for the fields just to the south.

Because of the high ecological value of the swamp forest, staff for the Natural Resource Conservation Service said they could not allow more than 18 inches of water to be held on the land. The realization was a blow to Daughtry’s hopes that the project would provide the farm with an adequate source of irrigation.

Bryant also insisted that some way be found to stop the release of water, should refuge staff determine that the added flow from the project was harming refuge lands.

Wilson Daughtry, left, supervises workers on his farm.

But could the refuge staff be assured that Daughtry would stop dumping drainage into the project area if asked? The relationship between the Lux Farms partners and the refuge staff had been strained by long-standing squabbles over hunting access on the farm property and the maintenance of shared roads. As the N.C. State engineers moved toward finishing the design, federation staff worried that the project would be derailed by their inability to assuage Bryant’s concerns.

Daughtry himself provided the solution. He suggested that his agreement with the Natural Resource Conservation Service for the wetlands contain a condition requiring Lux Farms to stop pumping water northward if the Fish & Wildlife determined that the project was harming refuge lands.

“Wilson has hung in there with us as we‘ve tried to develop the best design for all partners,” Fleckenstein said. “We’re lucky to have this relationship with him.”

In October, the federation signed a contract with Daughtry for work to begin the following year. The groundbreaking will culminate more than six years of planning.

Project’s Growth

What started as a project to restore oysters in Pamlico Sound has become much more. In addition to the original Fish & Wildlife shorebird habitat project, the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuaries Program provided $99,000 for water quality monitoring and additional dike work to fine-tune the farm’s ability to hold water in one of the habitat blocks.

The state trust fund is providing $400,000 for a similar project that will redirect drainage water onto 1,350 acres that have been set aside in wetland program.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s has made $70,000 available for a Watershed Restoration Plan within the Mattamuskeet Drainage Association. Farmers, engineers, federation staff and other partners are working together to identify future water management projects. Their goal is to remove waterways from the state’s list of impaired waters by cutting down on the amount of runoff coursing through the drainage system.

The federation staff has become regulars in Hyde, a conservative county generally avoided by other environmentalists. Mac Gibbs, the county’s agricultural extension director, now serves on NCCF’s board of directors.

And Wilson and Debby Daughtry, the federation’s original partners in Hyde restoration, greet federation staff members warmly when they stop into the farm office for yet another chat. Not that Wilson, with his droll nature, is effusive in his praise. When asked recently if he were pleased by the progress of the Lux Farms work, he just grinned and rubbed his chin.

“Well,” he said, “I haven’t run you off. Yet.”