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.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shared this week its plans for a $27.25 million allocation announced in March 2023 for restoration work in the Albemarle-Pamlico region.

Funded through the Inflation Reduction Act, nature-based solutions projects are sustainable practices that use natural features or processes to reduce carbon emissions and improve climate adaptation and resilience. The proposed projects are for nine units of the national wildlife refuge system and on state-owned game lands in northeastern North Carolina.

“This investment prioritizes projects that promote coastal resilience and climate adaptation, addresses invasive species threats, and provides for additional data collection needed to support successful natural resource resilience,” officials said.

Service Director Martha Williams announced the plans Thursday at Mackay Island National Wildlife Refuge in Knotts Island.

“These projects allow for significant progress towards restoring rivers, coasts and wetlands, and improving ecosystems that have been subjected to flooding and other extreme weather events,” Williams said in a statement. “With increasing shoreline erosion, saltwater intrusion and loss of habitable environments, the Inflation Reduction Act gives us the resources needed to implement nature-based solutions which will have lasting benefits to nature and communities for generations to come.”

Living shorelines are planned for Swanquarter National Wildlife Refuge in Hyde County, Cedar Island National Wildlife Refuge in Carteret County, Currituck National Wildlife Refuge and Mackay Island National Wildlife Refuge, both in Currituck County, and Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge in Dare County.

Living shorelines reduce wave action, trap sediment and help protect marsh and wetland habitats. The nature-based solution can reduce the severity of storm surge during severe weather events and improve water quality in nearshore waters.

Projects at the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in Tyrrell and Dare counties will focus on upgrading water-management infrastructure to reduce the impacts of saltwater intrusion.

Funds earmarked for Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge in Hyde County are to focus on improving the lake’s water quality and water management capability by redirecting water runoff.

Projects at the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in Hyde, Washington, Tyrrell counties will focus on restoring peatlands.

The work planned for Roanoke River National Wildlife Refuge in Bertie County is to remove barriers that isolate the Roanoke River from its floodplain.

North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission will receive $5 million to invest in Goose Creek Game Land and Gull Rock Game Land. The projects will focus on on shoreline protection, improvements to water quality, climate resiliency, and wetland impoundment upgrades.

“The Albemarle-Pamlico Estuarine System is home to some of the most climate vulnerable counties in the nation and is particularly susceptible to sea level rise and changes in storm intensity and frequency,” Mike Oetker, regional director for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Region, said. “We will continue working with partners to ensure we are good stewards of this significant investment, using nature-based solutions to increase resiliency in our communities and water-management infrastructure, as well as provide clean air and water for the community and local wildlife.”

For more information about the Service’s Inflation Reduction Act-related efforts, visit the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s website.

Mackay Island National Wildlife Refuge on Knotts Island is one of the 88 national wildlife refuges that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will begin allowing more recreational access and hunting and fishing opportunities.

The Department of the Interior announced Monday that the final rule opens or expands 910 opportunities for hunting or fishing across 2.1 million acres nationwide. The service defines an opportunity as one species on one field station. For example, merganser hunting at Mackay Island would be considered an opportunity.

The 2021–2022 Station-Specific Hunting and Sport Fishing Regulations guide is to be published Tuesday in the Federal Register. The guide is already available online. A complete list of all refuges and hatcheries is also available.

At Mackay Island National Wildlife Refuge, in Currituck County on the North Carolina-Virginia state line, the final rule allows hunting merganser, duck, sea duck, moorhen, swan, coot, gallinule, light goose and dark goose. Officials said this opens migratory bird hunting for the first time there. Additionally, existing deer hunting opportunities are expanded and hunting is open for feral hog and coyote, according to the service.

The increased recreational access is in line with the Biden-Harris administration’s America the Beautiful initiative, a locally led and voluntary, nationwide effort to conserve, connect, and restore 30% of lands and waters by 2030, according to the service.

“Increasing access to outdoor recreation opportunities is essential to advancing the Administration’s commitment to the conservation stewardship of our public lands,” Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement. “Responsible hunting and fishing helps to promote healthy wildlife habitats while boosting local recreation economies.”

Monday’s action brings the number of units in the service’s National Wildlife Refuge System where the public may hunt to 434 and the number where fishing will be permitted to 378. The final rule continues efforts to revise refuge hunting and fishing regulations to align with state regulations where the refuge is located.

“Today’s announcement furthers a rich tradition of providing quality outdoor recreation experiences to the American people on our public lands,” Service Principal Deputy Director Martha Williams said. “By expanding these opportunities, we are enhancing the lives of millions of Americans while stimulating the national economy to which hunting and fishing contribute significantly.”

The service, which manages hunting and fishing programs to ensure sustainable wildlife populations while also offering other wildlife-dependent recreation on public lands, finalized the changes in time for the coming hunting seasons.

The National Wildlife Refuge System is a network of 567 national wildlife refuges and 38 wetland management districts. National wildlife refuges provide vital habitat for thousands of species and access to fishing, hunting, paddling, nature watching, photography and environmental education.

National Wildlife Refuge Week, Oct. 11-17, is a great way to celebrate the outdoors this year after spending months at home because of COVID-19 precautions.

National Wildlife Refuge Week celebrates all the ways to discover hunting, fishing, biking and paddling to trail running, photography, walking and virtual nature programs.

The National Wildlife Refuge System is managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. There are 11 refuges in the state, 10 of which are in eastern North Carolina.

Founded by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1903, national wildlife refuges offer access to outdoor activities while providing vital habitat for thousands of wildlife species. Nearly 60 million people visit refuges each year.

Special events traditionally mark National Wildlife Refuge Week, observed each year during the second full week of October.

Under the National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act of 1997, the Service permits hunting and fishing along with four other types of wildlife-dependent recreation, including wildlife photography, environmental education, wildlife observation, and interpretation, when these activities are compatible with an individual refuge’s purpose and mission. There are new opportunities for hunting and fishing on national wildlife refuges from coast to coast.

National wildlife refuges pump $3.2 billion per year into local economies and support more than 41,000 jobs, according to the Service’s report Banking on Nature.

Entrance fees to national wildlife refuges, including those in North Carolina, are temporarily suspended.

The U.S.  Fish and Wildlife Service announced Thursday that Interior Secretary David Bernhardt put the hold on entrance fees until further notice.

“I’ve directed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to waive entrance fees at national wildlife refuges that remain open. This small step makes it a little easier for the American public to enjoy the outdoors at these incredible places,” said Bernhardt. “Our vast public lands that are overseen by the Department offer special outdoor experiences to recreate, embrace nature and implement some social distancing.”

Outdoor spaces will remain open to the public at most refuges when possible to adhere to public health guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Many facilities such as visitor centers will be closed.

“The health of our visitors is our number one priority,” said Service Director Aurelia Skipwith. “When CDC guidance is followed, a national wildlife refuge can be the perfect antidote to cabin fever and a boon to our mental well-being during this unprecedented time.”

Officials urged visitors to follow CDC guidance while visiting refuges. Updates about the response to the coronavirus will be posted online.

Fish and Wildlife Service officials recommend check the refuge’s website before visiting. The following is a list of refuges in North Carolina:

• Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge 
• Cedar Island National Wildlife Refuge 
• Currituck National Wildlife Refuge 
• Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge
• Mackay Island National Wildlife Refuge 
• Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge
• Mountain Bogs National Wildlife Refuge
• Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge
• Pee Dee National Refuge and Conservation Area
• Pocosin Lakes National Refuge
• Roanoke River National Refuge and Conservation Area
• Swan Quarter National Refuge and Conservation Area

Knotts Island is really a peninsula that hangs from Virginia, top of photo, and separates North Landing River, bottom, from Back Bay. Most of the residents live on the east side of the peninsula. Mackay Island National Wildlife Refuge, left, makes up two-thirds of the peninsula. The Currituck Banks stretch down the right side of the picture. Photo: Knotts Island Scrapebook

First of two parts

KNOTTS ISLAND – It’s good to know that there are still some remote places left in North Carolina like this misnamed “island” in a  far-off corner of our coast. It’s even better to know that someone cares enough to save a piece of it and the rich history that comes along with it.

But then, Bill Holman has always been that kind of guy. He has a long pedigree as a protector of North Carolina’s wild and beautiful places, starting more than 30 years ago when he was the first and only environmental lobbyist roaming the halls of the N.C. General Assembly. In those days, he might as well have walked around with a “Kick Me” sign pinned on his back. But Holman gradually wore down the hidebound men who dominated the legislature at the time, persuading them finally to repeal laws that prevented the state from passing environmental rules more stringent than their federal counterparts.  Holman then watched with chagrin decades later as the current crop of lawmakers merrily undid his signature accomplishment. Talk about kicking a fella.

The Knotts Island ferry carries island children to school. Photo: NCDOT

But by then Holman had long left the legislative business, but he didn’t abandon the state’s environment. He headed a state trust fund that provided money to buy ecologically sensitive lands. He took on the thankless task of leading North Carolina’s environmental agency – more thankless these days, I suspect, with federal prosecutors sniffing around — and now Holman directs the Conservation Fund’s work in the state.

That’s what brought him recently to the state ferry dock in Currituck on a bright but chilly winter’s day that hinted of snow. Founded in 1985, the Conservation Fund has protected more than seven million acres of America. Holman was heading across Currituck Sound to nail down the details of saving a few hundred more here in North Carolina.

“We’re very happy to finally secure this property,” Holman told me a little later as the ferry pulled away from the dock on the start of its 45-minute trip across the sound. “The fund has been interested in this property for a long time.”

It announced in December that it had finally bought the 425 acres on Knotts Island, which is really a peninsula that hangs down from Virginia between North Landing River and Back Bay, the northern reaches of the sound. The ferry is the only way to get a car there from North Carolina without first driving it all the way up to Virginia Beach.

William Byrd

The waterfront property that the fund bought has great ecological significance, but it’s the land’s connection to the history of this region that really drew me up here. For Flyway Farms, as the place is majestically called, is the last of the great hunting clubs of Currituck. The farm is one of the few reminders of the days when great wealth and seemingly endless flocks of ducks and geese made the marshes and waterways of this remote part of the state the exclusive playground of the rich and mighty.  Great captains of industry and princes of finance had lodges along the sound. Presidents and prime ministers often joined them. The region had such a gilded reputation that the train that carried the potentates south from Norfolk was called the Millionaire Special.

William Byrd may have been the first of the breed to come this way. A Virginia aristocrat and politician, Byrd apparently enjoyed looking down his long nose at his lesser neighbors in North Carolina. He came to mind as the ferry slowly steamed past duck blinds and around the notorious shoals that so bedeviled Byrd and his pilot in 1728. He had been assigned the job of helping survey the disputed boundary between the two colonies. Byrd later wrote about the experience in what is now a famous book, Histories of the Dividing Line Betwixt Virginia and North Carolina.  In it, Byrd makes great sport of poking fun at the rubes he encounters, but the book is formal and rather staid compared to the “Secret History,” which Byrd compiled on the spot and had intended just for friends. In it, he tells us what he really thinks.

“This Navigation was so difficult by reason of the perpetual Shoals, that we were often fast aground,” Byrd wrote of his Currituck crossing. “Our Pilot wou’d have been a miserable Man if One half of that Gentleman’s Curses had taken effect.”

Byrd and his cussing companion finally made it to Knotts Island. After slogging ashore through knee-deep mud, they waited in a farmhouse for the surveyors.  Word of their arrival spread through the sparsely settled country, and a small crowd slowly gathered to catch a glimpse of the distinguished visitors.

“Amongst other Spectators came 2 Girls to see us, one of which was very handsome, & the other very willing,” Byrd wrote. “However we only saluted them, & if we committed any Sin at all, it was only in our Hearts. Capt White, a Grandee of Nott’s Island, & Mr. Moss, a Grandee of Princess Ann, made us a visit & helpt to empty our Liquor.”

This is one of the sketches William Byrd’s surveying party did of the boundary between North Carolina and Virginia. Notice  the peninsula that’s labeled “Nots Island.” Source:  Histories of the Dividing Line Betwixt Virginia and North Carolina

Alas, no booze or babes awaited Holman and me when we arrived on the island. We were greeted by long stretches of two-lane blacktop that coursed past farm fields and modest homes with boats in the front yards, past the small Methodist Church, past the volunteer fire department and the island’s only grocery store.

We took a left on the aptly named Marsh Causeway and entered another world. The seven-mile-long peninsula is really two places. Most of its 2,000 or so residents live on a thin strip of high ground along the east side of the peninsula. Ducks, geese and swans have the rest of it.

Almost two-thirds of the peninsula is within the 8,300-acre Mackay Island National Wildlife Refuge. Much of it is open water and marsh, now wearing its amber winter coat and stretching to the horizon on both sides of the causeway, the main road through the refuge.

This land has its own colorful history after the Mackie family started acquiring it in 1716. One of its later owners, Thomas Dixon Jr., grew up on a farm near Shelby, in the state’s foothills, during the Reconstruction. He became a Baptist preacher and a prolific author whose writings glorified the antebellum South; white supremacists are still fond of quoting him. Director D.W. Griffith turned  Dixon’s novel and play The Clansmen into “Birth of a Nation,” a 1915 silent film that is considered a ground-breaking  technical achievement that launched modern filmmaking but is so disgustingly racist that it’s impossible to find on Netflix.

Joseph Knapp feeds pheasants at his house on Knotts Island. Photo: Knotts Island Scrapebook

Joseph P. Knapp, who bought the land from Dixon, was less notorious and more helpful to the ducks and geese. The Brooklyn, N.Y., native fell in love with the marshes and the birds of Knotts Island. A publisher and philanthropist, JP, as he was called, built a palatial estate here and experimented with various techniques to better manage waterfowl. It was on the island, says local folklore, that he started what is now Ducks Unlimited. JP was 86 in 1951 when he died in his sleep in his Manhattan apartment. More than 400 people attended the funeral. He left instructions for his body to carried to little Myock, just across the sound, so that he could be buried near his island home.

The Mackay land changed hands several times after Knapp’s death before the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service bought it in 1960 to establish the refuge.

Holman and I pulled off on one of the few wide spots along Marsh Causeway and into a gravel lot. It was empty except for a black Harley Davidson in the corner. A small, elevated boardwalk extended over the marsh. The scenic stop is part of the Charles Kuralt Trail, a self-guided auto tour that snakes through the coastal refuges of North Carolina and southeastern Virginia. It was named to honor our state’s most famous traveler, who wore out six motorhomes taking a generation of TV viewers to the backwaters of America. It was only after Kuralt’s death in 1997 that we learned just how far he wandered off the trail.
“This is a good place to take a look at the refuge and where our property boundaries are,” Holman said as we walked up the boardwalk. “And it’s a pretty day.”

The boardwalk overlooked a portion of Back Bay. Duck blinds dotted the water like little brown islands. Decoys bobbed in front of several.

“They’re wasting their time,” the man in the black motorcycle chaps said as he peered through binoculars toward the hunters. “It’s too nice of a day. Cold and snow tomorrow. That’s when I plan to be out there. The hunting will be better.”

The owner of the Harley turned out to be a local guy, born and raised just across the state line. He comes often to Knotts Islands to hunt, fish or peer through binoculars at those who are.  He was happy to hear that Holman’s outfit has bought old Flyway Farms.

“This place is special,” he said. “It needs to stay that way. It doesn’t need subdivisions and shopping malls. You can go anywhere for those.”

Tuesday: Flyway Farms and the hunting clubs of Currituck