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.”

This story has been updated to include a corrected description of land ownership. Information initially provided to Coastal Review had incorrectly identified the owner.

More people moved to North Carolina last year from different parts of the country than any other state in the nation.

North Carolina’s population grew by almost 150,000 people, trailing behind only Texas and Florida, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates released last month.

As political leaders grapple with the demands that growth is placing on essential services like water and sewer, public safety and education, pressure is mounting on conservation groups to acquire, conserve and preserve land.

This month, more than 2,000 acres in coastal counties have been secured for permanent protection from development.

These newly protected areas are filled with natural landscape features that reduce flood risk, improve water quality, and provide habitat for plants and animals that are increasingly getting squeezed out by encroaching development.

In Brunswick County, one of the fastest growing in the state, North Carolina-based conservation nonprofit Unique Places to Save acquired land that serves as a corridor between two protected natural areas, bridging what amounts to nearly 10,000 acres of conserved landscape.

“We really want to be able to maintain large, connected natural areas for habitat for species and to maintain biodiversity of our natural areas,” Unique Places to Save Executive Director Christine Pickens told Coastal Review in a recent telephone interview. “And, particularly, in the southeast of North Carolina, we have some really cool endemic species and really wonderful habitats that you don’t find anywhere else.”

Within the 1,040-acre tract nestled between the towns of St. James and Boiling Spring Lakes are forested wetlands, Carolina bays, sandy pine and wet sandy pine savanna.

The tract, referred to as Boiling Springs Wilderness, specifically connects thousands of acres of privately conserved land including Orton with the North Carolina Boiling Spring Lakes Plant Conservation Preserve.

“When you connect these large areas, you’re connecting a mosaic across the landscape and there’s tiny variations of habitat availability,” Pickens explained. “What that does is allow species that use that area for habitat or refuge or migration to use those slight variations of habitat. When we experience extremes in weather, precipitation or drought or big storms, having just a little bit of wiggle room in terms of available habitat goes a long way to allowing species to be resilient to some of these extremes and some of these changes.”

Habitat that is free from being sliced up by ditches or roads is valuable to species that rely on that habitat, she said.

Take the red cockaded woodpecker, for example. These birds, which were reclassified in late 2024 from endangered to threatened, live in groups, or clusters, helping each other raise their young.

They depend on large, connected natural areas – typically anywhere from 125 to 200 acres – where living pine trees, preferably mature, longleaf pine forests, grow.

Boiling Springs Wilderness includes varying types of soils that support different sets of plants, trees, shrubs and forbs, more commonly referred to as herbs.

A good deal of pond pine and a “little bit” of young longleaf pine grace its landscape, Pickens said.

The headwaters of Orton Creek are within the project area, as are wetlands that blanket the Castle Hayne aquifer, a drinking water source for thousands of Brunswick County residents and tens of thousands in other coastal North Carolina areas.

“That’s a long-term way to protect water quality,” Pickens said. “The areas around streams act as buffers to absorb nutrients, runoff, excess components in surface water that soak in, and they get absorbed by the plants and the roots and the soils around streams. That prevents excess nutrients getting into waterways.”

Then there are the wetlands, which function like nature’s sponges, absorbing stormwater that might otherwise flood developed properties.

“Every chance we get to conserve wetlands is really important right now,” Pickens said.

That’s because state lawmakers decided to align North Carolina’s definition of wetlands with that of the federal government, which is in the process of changing the interpretation of waters of the United States that may omit protections for millions of acres of wetlands in the state.

“It may result in more wetlands being nonjurisdictional, therefore a lot more likely to be converted to uplands through ditching and draining. These conservation easements are perpetual. Once we protect it, that’s it,” Pickens said.

The Boiling Springs Wilderness project was funded through a $3.68 million North Carolina Land and Water Fund grant.

Unique Places to Save will own and manage the tract, while the state will hold the conservation easement. The Coastal Land Trust will steward that easement.

Last year, Unique Places to Save applied for another state Land and Water Fund grant to protect about 500 acres of predominately wetlands between the town of St. James and N.C. Highway 211.

“We’ve got a provisional award from the Land and Water Fund so if they have enough funding we may get funded this year for that effort,” Pickens said.

She touted efforts among other groups that work to conserve land throughout the state, including the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, The Nature Conservancy, North Carolina Plant Conservation Program, North Carolina Coastal Land Trust, and Cape Fear Arch to name a few.

Tyrrell County parcel transferred

Last week, national nonprofit The Conservation Fund finalized the transfer of ownership of about 1,550 acres of coastal wetlands and forestland in Tyrrell County to the Coastal Federation.

“This partnership reflects years of careful conservation planning and cooperation,” Coastal Federation Executive Director Braxton Davis stated in a release. “This acquisition protects important coastal wetlands that help filter water, support fish and wildlife habitat, and provide natural flood buffering in on the of the state’s most ecologically significant regions.”

Portions of the Tyrrell County property, which is valued at an estimated $1.7 million, are in the Land and Water Fund’s Stewardship Program, one designed to establish, monitor and enforce perpetual conservation agreements.

The property will be included as part of the Coastal Federation’s Land for a Healthy Coast program, which focuses on protecting estuaries, reducing polluted runoff, buffering floods, and boosting long-term coastal resilience.

“Some lands are simply too important to risk losing,” Coastal Federation founder and senior adviser Todd Miller said in the release. “When a property protects water quality, supports fisheries, and strengthens the natural defenses of the coast, we believe it’s our responsibility to step forward and ensure it is permanently conserved and well managed.”

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.”

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.”

With this week’s award of a $450 million contract to a nationwide construction company, work can now begin on replacing the 65-year-old, swing-span bridge that crosses the Alligator River on U.S. Highway 64.

The concrete and steel span between Tyrrell and Dare counties is well beyond its intended lifespan, which is typically 50 years for bridges, tops, in terms of comforting federal transportation engineers. Coastal bridges in salt environments are often subject to some of the harshest conditions.

Federal officials set a goal nearly two decades ago for new bridges to be built to standards such that they last a century.

On Wednesday, the North Carolina Board of Transportation approved the contract with Skanska USA, which has an office in Durham, to replace the Lindsay C. Warren Bridge with a modern, two-lane fixed-span bridge.

Workers are expected to begin driving bridge pilings in the next several weeks, weather permitting, and begin other activities such as clearing, at the site of the new bridge just north of the existing structure.

“Under terms of the contract, the new bridge will open to traffic in the fall of 2029, with demolition of the current bridge to begin in the spring of 2030,” Department of Transportation officials said Wednesday.

The existing bridge was completed in 1960 and is the main route to access the Outer Banks from the west, and a critical hurricane evacuation route. The aging swing span is maintained regularly but is prone to occasional mechanical failures that force motorists onto a 99-mile detour.

“The new bridge will also improve river traffic, as more than 4,000 boats pass through the swing span each year,” officials said.

Some of the funding is through a $110 million grant from the Federal Highway Administration under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed in 2021.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation announced Tuesday that its contractor had completed a test pile project in the Alligator River between Tyrrell and Dare counties earlier this month, work that will inform the design of a planned new bridge.

Eleven large concrete test piles were driven into the riverbed at various depths, officials said. The posts, which support the bridge structure, will help engineers learn about soil layers and depths and soil consistency in the riverbed as they design a replacement for the 64-year-old Lindsay C. Warren Bridge that is part of U.S. Highway 64.

“The soil samples and field data we collected during the test pile project will help us make revisions that determine the final construction design of the bridge structure,” said N.C. Department of Transportation Resident Engineer Pablo Hernandez.

Actual bridge construction is slated to begin later this year or early 2025.

New York-based Skanska USA was the contractor for the test pile project, which began in the spring.

NCDOT had announced in April that as many as 18 test piles would be driven.

Officials said in the latest announcement that the test piles would be removed once the bridge construction project is underway.

The new Alligator River bridge is to replace the existing swing-span bridge with a two-lane, fixed-span, high-rise bridge on a new location just north of the current bridge. The new bridge will include two 12-foot travel lanes with 8-foot shoulders.

Second of two parts. Read Part 1.

EAST LAKE — Before guardrails were installed about 20 years ago along U.S. Highways 64 and 264 in rural northeastern North Carolina, residents avoided driving at night in fear of striking a large animal and then sliding unseen into the abyss of a roadside canal.

Even now, with the barriers in place, locals know to drive with caution through the dark wilds of Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, scanning the edge of the forest for glowing eyes or sudden movements of creatures on night hunts — raccoon, possum, bobcat, fox, bear, deer, coyotes and red wolves.

Vehicle strikes are a serious hazard to humans and animals, but they can be especially devastating to the recovery of the endangered wolves that number only about 22 in the wild, 18 of which are collared and within the 1.7-million-acre management area encompassing public and private land in Beaufort, Dare, Hyde, Tyrrell and Washington counties.

When a wild red wolf is killed, the loss can destroy the cohesion of a pack, creating a negative impact on reproduction that is so critical to the species’ survival.

Last year, for example, in two separate instances, wolves from the same pack were struck and killed on U.S. 64, said wildlife biologist Joe Madison, manager for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Red Wolf Recovery Program.

Madison told Coastal Review that one of the males and one of the pups were killed. “So that family group kind of got messed up, and we ended up capturing and placing the female for that family group back in captivity.”

With the loss of her mate, Madison explained, the female had started wandering to a different area and creating issues, such as getting into chickens that made her no longer suitable for the wild. “But it was going well until that mortality of the male and one of the pups, and then it kind of went downhill from there.”

After years of study in the early 2000s, the North Carolina Department of Transportation had developed plans to construct numerous wildlife crossings along U.S. 64 in Dare and Tyrrell counties as part of a proposed 27.3-mile-long road widening and bridge-replacement project. The department has since dropped the widening project, but $110 million provided recently by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law allowed NCDOT to replace the 60-year-old Lindsey C. Warren Bridge over Alligator River. That $270 million project, which began this spring, will include wildlife crossings and under-road tie-ins at both ends of the bridge.

But it’s not enough, conservation groups say. Granted, more wildlife crossings would be costly to build in Alligator River’s swampy land, but considering the enormous investment that’s been put into the life of each red wolf in the interest of restoration of a unique species, these groups contend they’re worth it.

“That’s why one of the things we’re stressing this year is trying to make progress on getting (assistance from) NCDOT, who’s making great strides in the wildlife road crossings department,” Ron Sutherland, chief scientist at the nonprofit Wildlands Network, told Coastal Review recently. “We want them to try to put in for federal grants to build wildlife crossings and fencing on 64 through the refuge in particular.”

Sutherland had connected with an anonymous donor who recently pledged $2 million in matching funds for a grant to fund wildlife crossings in the refuge to protect red wolves, and the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity stepped in to help raise the match, he said in recent email.

“I’m working directly with NCDOT to try to bring a big proposal for U.S. 64 to Federal Highways, which can only happen if we have enough nonfederal matching funds to work with, he said, adding that the state would have to provide a 20% match to the Federal Highway Administration money.

Although the costs versus benefit of keeping red wolves away from vehicle tires is clear, he said, wildlife crossings through a refuge teeming with wildlife would provide plenty of benefits to every creature dashing, hopping, galumphing, scurrying, slithering or crawling across the highway.

“That stretch of Highway 64 through the refuge and through the Alligator River game lands, it’s got to be up there in terms of national priorities for reducing roadkill in terms of the sheer numbers of wildlife,” Sutherland said. “There were like tens of thousands of dead animals that they recorded in the DOT-funded study. And so it’s definitely not just the wolves, but bears and deer and bobcats and so many turtles, so many snakes … that I’ve seen dead on that road. Nobody wants to see that.”

According to the draft environmental impact statement for the then-proposed widening project, 36% of all crashes and 77% of night crashes on the two-lane road were because of animals. Five crashes occurred within a milelong stretch in Tyrrell County about a mile west of the bridge.

Between July 1996 to June 1999, the fatal crash rate for the project area was 4.13 crashes per 100 motor vehicle miles. After the guardrails were installed along the canals on U.S. 64, the fatal crash rate went down to 1.02 per 100 miles.

The proposed widening had called for about 11 overpasses or underpasses and dozens of smaller structures for amphibians, reptiles and small mammals. Four wildlife crossings that were installed decades ago off U.S. 64 between Columbia and Plymouth had been shown to be about 90% effective, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist had said in 2013. Designed with 6- to 8-foot-high fences at the road edge and both sides of the opening, the fence corrals animals toward underpasses, culverts or a bridge.

Travis Wilson, a biologist with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission Habitat Conservation Division, said that the east and west sides of the proposed 3.2-mile Alligator River bridge replacement will be lengthened to accommodate culverts for fencing and wildlife passage.

Based on his years of monitoring the commission’s wildlife crossings, Wilson said he expects that all species will use the passages, although white-tailed deer tend to be more skittish.

“I have documented most every large mammal, medium-sized mammal, in North Carolina using culverts fairly frequently, from black bear to coyotes, on down,” he told Coastal Review.

If funding is found for additional crossings beyond the bridge, he said they would be designed in different sizes for different species. Vegetation at the crossings, and the fencing would need to be maintained, and some areas in front of passages would need a timber pole “bridge” over a canal.

“That’s really what the crossings are there for,” he said.  “It’s not for a single species — it’s to reduce wildlife mortality by vehicles … to make the highway more permeable to all wildlife.”

While the recovery team would welcome wildlife crossings, the staff’s focus will remain on keeping wild-born and captive-bred wolves who have been introduced into the wild away from any human interactions and activity whatsoever. The less habituated wolves are to humans, the better for both species. The staff also takes pains to minimize contact as much as possible, Madison said, and when handling is necessary, it is done as gently as possible, with voices low and no petting.

In addition to using a hand-held antenna to keep track of the collared wolves, which wear lightweight GPS devices on reflective collars, or for some, smaller VHF radio devices, there are more than 55 remote sensing cameras to see who is where and when.

GPS collars, which cost about $2,000 and weigh 1.3 pounds, cannot exceed 4% of the animal’s body weight. The VHF collars are lighter but don’t send points from satellites.

A red wolf known as No. 2191 was recently sighted in the Milltail area of the Alligator River refuge. Madison said that the young male’s fear of people gives him a better chance to avoid becoming one of the unfortunate number of casualties suffered by red wolves from too-close encounters with people.

Madison held a small radio telemetry antenna during a visit to the Milltail area in late April. A steady beep revealed that the wolf — or more specifically his GPS collar — was close but too far away to see without field glasses. The wolf was born at Wolf Haven International in Washington state, one of the 50 zoological institutions and wildlife centers that participate in the captive-breeding program that is critical to repopulating the species in the wild.

When 2191 — the animals purposely are not named — was deemed ready for life in the wild, he was transferred to Alligator River.

“They did an excellent job,” Madison said, referring to Wolf Haven, “because he wants nothing to do with people.”

After his arrival, 2191 was placed in an acclimation pen before being released on Jan. 29 to meet a female who had come into heat, “in the hopes that they could become a pair,” said Madison.

The good news is that it appears that the handsome wolf is the father of a litter of eight pups born in the refuge in May. It’s the third year in a row that the Milltail pack has produced a litter, and this was the first sired by 2191. The previous breeding male that had sired two litters was killed by a vehicle last year.

Madison said he understands why zoos and conservation centers name the wolves, but it’s against the recovery team policy. The studbook number that is assigned to each animal identifies them in sequence that is vital management information.

American red wolves once had an enormous range in the Southeast and along the Gulf Coast. But because of habitat loss and hunting, the population collapsed. The red wolf was listed as endangered in 1973 and declared extinct in the wild in 1980. In 1987, four pairs of captive-bred wolves were released at Alligator River refuge.

Innovative management practices, such as pup fostering and coyote sterilization programs, grew the population, and by 2010, there were about 130 red wolves in the wild. But politics and funding shortages led to management cuts, and the population plummeted to seven before a federal judge ordered the program to resume in 2021.

Starting over has had its challenges. When 11 captive-born wolves were released in 2022, three wound up dead from gunshots and five were killed by vehicles. In the last year alone, four wolves have been killed by vehicles.

Still, the new litters provide hope, and the restored pup fostering practice — where a captive-born pup is slipped into a wolf den with a litter of pups about the same age — has been successful. So has the renewed coyote sterilization program, which allows hormonally-intact coyotes to hold territory, keep out fertile coyotes and prevent hybrids.

From November until March, the recovery team is kept busy doing captures to collar older pups, perform health check on the mature wolves and sterilize coyotes. There are 16 pens in the Sandy Ridge area, each double-fenced, but only 13 are currently usable. Interns and other staff enter the pen to water and feed the wolves and check on them. At that point, the wolves either go to the farthest distance and pace, or they go to their den box. The never try to escape.

“They don’t want to come near you,” Madison said. “They’re very nonaggressive.”

The pens are especially useful in letting wild wolves visit the captive wolves and start making friends. Recovery staff can watch with the remote-sensing cameras for signs that courtship may be blooming. Once they’re let free, all bets are off.

“We’ve had bonded pairs that came from captivity,” Madison recalled. “They were bonded in captivity, had had previous litters together, they had a litter in the pen, and they still left each other when we opened it up. It was like, ‘Now that I have options, you ain’t it!’”

Sutherland said that he is encouraged that the red wolf population is rebounding and that wildlife crossings are a critical component in its recovery. Healthy numbers of red wolf packs also would go far in pushing out a lot of the opportunistic coyotes and raccoons that swooped into vacated wolf territories, he said.

As they’ve done out west, he said, wolves can keep other species in check not just by eating them, but also by creating a climate of fear that works for the good of the entire ecosystem.

“So that’s the value of having the wolves back,” he said. “Not only are they the only thing that seems to control coyotes, but they also do kill the raccoons and we think that’s important from the standpoint of bird populations.”

“The red wolf was a success story of the Endangered Species Act, and it’s been saved from extinction,” Sutherland said. Now the question is whether the program can rebuild, without the apex predator being plowed down on a strip of asphalt.

Note: Coastal Review will not publish Wednesday in observance of Juneteenth National Independence Day, a federal holiday.

North Carolina Office of State Archaeology staff are completing two projects to identify resources and communities on state-owned, coastal lands impacted by 2018 hurricanes and that remain at risk of damage from future storm events.

Called the North Carolina Shorescape Survey, the public will have a chance to learn more about what they discovered during two town halls on the projects aimed to identify, document and assess archaeological resources on the shorelines of the Scuppernong River Dedicated Nature Reserve, Alligator River Game Lands, both in Tyrrell County, and Hammocks Beach State Park in Swansboro.

The first town hall is scheduled for 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 11, at the Tyrrell Senior Center, 406 Bridge St., Columbia, and the second 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 12, at the Swansboro Area Heritage Center, 502 W. Church St., Swansboro.

Organizers said that the public is encouraged to share their knowledge of any historical sites, cemeteries, or stories about the history of these places, family or community ties or observations during the town halls.

Fieldwork at all locations was complete in December 2023 and data analysis is currently underway. Several new sites were discovered and paint a picture of long-term use of these lands. The fieldwork also revealed major impacts to sites in barrier island systems.

“The results of these studies are helping the state develop better management strategies and share the rich community and cultural histories of the North Carolina coast,” officials said.

The project was funded through the Emergency Supplemental Historic Preservation Fund appropriated by Congress in response to hurricanes Florence and Michael in 2018 and administered by the National Park Service.

More information on these and other projects related to changing systems can be found on the projects website or this past report, “Surveys to guide moves to save cultural sites on state lands.”

COLUMBIA – The North Carolina Department of Transportation said Thursday that its contractors will soon begin driving concrete test piles into the bed of the Alligator River in what officials called an important step in the project to replace the U.S. Highway 64 bridge over the river between Tyrrell and Dare counties.

NCDOT announced that as many as 18 test piles would be driven, with New York-based Skanska USA overseeing the test pile project. Officials described the piles as heavy posts driven into the ground as a foundation for a structure such as a bridge.

The work is to guide design and construction engineers in deciding the best means and methods of constructing the replacement bridge and will help them complete environmental reviews and construction plans.

The Lindsay C. Warren Bridge is a 64-year-old, swing-span bridge. NCDOT said its replacement will be a modern two-lane, fixed-span, high-rise bridge sited just north of the current bridge. The new bridge will include two, 12-foot travel lanes with 8-foot breakdown lanes.

Construction on the new bridge is expected to begin in late 2024 or early 2025.

With the shoreline surveys of three state-owned lands complete, North Carolina Office of State Archaeology officials are waiting for the contractor’s draft assessment of storm-related impacts before they can develop a plan to protect these vulnerable cultural sites.

When that data is delivered in the coming months about Hammocks Beach State Park in the Swansboro area, and Alligator River Game Land and the Scuppernong River section of Pettigrew State Park, both in Tyrrell County, Historic Preservation Archaeology Specialist Allyson Ropp said recently that her office intends to look at ways to protect the cultural sites on land, underwater and in the tidal zone.

Called North Carolina Shorescape Survey, this project and the Historic Cemetery Survey, which documented how cemeteries had been affected by hurricanes and identified unmarked cemeteries, are being funded through the Emergency Supplemental Historic Preservation Fund, administered by the National Park Service.

The state’s archaeology office was awarded $1 million of the $17 million North Carolina received following the storm surges, rain and high winds from hurricanes Florence and Michael in 2018. Those storms threatened coastal historic structures and archaeological sites, according to an October 2023 update on the project. Both projects have been in the planning stages since 2020. Fieldwork for the shore survey wrapped up in late 2023.

Scott Seibel, associate vice president of multinational infrastructure consulting firm AECOM, told Coastal Review last week that his team worked on the three sites this past fall and are producing the draft report now. The plan is to deliver the draft by early March.

If there’s anything of interest in the data, they will explore it further, and if not, Ropp said her office will complete its report and then hold public meetings, most likely in April.

The three sites were chosen using a model that ranked the state-owned and -managed lands by environmental and historical significance.

Ropp said she designed the model by combining known data on storm surge and sediment movement, historic maps and existing archaeological information to prioritize all of the state lands in the 12 counties. Those counties are Beaufort, Bertie, Brunswick, Carteret, Craven, Dare, Hyde, New Hanover, Onslow, Pamlico, Pender and Tyrrell.

The shoreline is the focus because, as Acting State Archaeologist and Deputy State Archaeologist Chris Southerly said, there was a lot of activity at the shoreline environment, such as fishing or wading out into the water to collect shellfish.

“I’d say almost the majority of the cultural interface that we have maritime dealings with in water happens in that 60 meters (about 197 feet) one way to 60 meters the other from the shoreline,” Southerly said.

Because that interface can be difficult to reach, land-based archaeologists may not go all the way to shore and in-water archaeologists will stop where the boat stops.

Shorelines are where “a lot of cultural material could be lost,” Southerly continued. For example, an American Indian could have dropped something into the muck while getting out of his dugout canoe, or English settlers from their vessels, or by soldiers during war time.

The project in the Swansboro area is looking at archaeological sites within the shoreline environment – about 60 meters inland from the low-tide mark and about 60 meters offshore the low-tide mark – “to see how archaeological resources in those areas are being impacted by shoreline erosion, hurricanes, storm surge, inundation in general,” Ropp said.

Hammocks Beach is one of the more vulnerable sites, Ropp said, because the state-managed park is part of a barrier island, has a lot of known resources, and has a high potential for more to be discovered. The land also has a rich African American maritime history, which is another reason the park topped the list.

There are 27 known sites on two of the protected islands and the mainland. “Most of those, I believe, are prehistoric shell middens,” she said.

A midden is a mound of refuse that may include shells, fish and deer bones and plant remains — things Indigenous peoples harvested from the landscapes around them.

Southerly noted that shell middens are extensive in Carteret County and parts of Onslow County and are usually indicative of long-term habitation by American Indians. This means there’s a higher probability of finding an intact Native American site nearby.

“Shell middens are one of the key markers to look for along the coastal area for pre-contact American Indians,” he said, and built-up shell middens are a good indication of repeated settlement or habitation.

Both sites in Tyrrell County have a high potential for plantation-related resources, canal building, shipwrecks, and general marine infrastructure.

AECOM, a cultural resource management firm with offices all over the East Coast, performed this fall the land and in-water surveys with a field crew of about 15 and around 10 in the office working on artifact analysis and geographic information system, or GIS data.

The area for each of the three projects was 60 meters landward of the shoreline and 200 meters, or 656 feet, into the water.

The fieldwork at Hammocks Beach State Park included both terrestrial and underwater archaeology, Seibel said. “We surveyed the entire shoreline area of the mainland portion of the park, all of the shoreline area of Huggins Island, and the sound-side shoreline of Bear Island.”

For the terrestrial archaeology, which took place from early October to early December 2023, most of the work involved shovel-digging test pits at 100- and 50-foot intervals within the project area. The pits were about 12 to 16 inches in diameter and about 3.3 feet in depth.

The sediments were screened through 0.25-inch wire mesh to collect artifacts such as ceramic sherds, stone flakes and oyster shell from the pre-contact middens. They found brick and glass, too.

“We also inspected the ground surface for artifacts and features, such as brick foundations from former houses,” Southerly said. “All of our shovel test pits and any features that we found were mapped using a GPS system. Along the shorelines, we used an electronic data form to record information about the condition of the shoreline and the possible threats to archaeological sites from things like waves, tree fall, and looting.”

The underwater survey, which took about a week to complete, included using remote sensing equipment towed behind a boat including a side-scan sonar, magnetometer and sub-bottom profiler, Seibel continued.

“A side-scan sonar uses sound waves to produce images of the seafloor. A magnetometer records anomalies in the Earth’s magnetic field and is useful for identifying shipwrecks that contain iron, like nails,” he explained. “A sub-bottom profiler is similar to a side-scan sonar, except that it provides information about sediment layers below the seafloor and can be used to identify old and buried streams and terrestrial landforms from when sea levels were much lower than today.”

The terrestrial archaeology work was different at the two project locations in Tyrrell County, Seibel said.

“Along the Scuppernong River, since it was all cypress or cedar swamp, all we were able to do was slowly run a boat along the river’s edge to see if there were any signs of piers, docks, or other similar features or small areas that could be shovel tested,” he explained. “At the other project area along the Little Alligator River and fronting Albemarle Sound, most of the project area was also swamp, but often thick with phragmites, an invasive reedy plant. We were able to walk over the small beach areas looking for artifacts and dig shovel test pits in scattered areas.”

The underwater survey took about a week to complete for each of the areas, while the terrestrial survey work for all three areas totaled over three months last fall.

“As we expected, the mainland and Huggins Island portions of Hammocks Beach State Park have been used by people for thousands of years. Archaeological site types include large pre-contact shell middens and even a pre-contact village as well as the remains of historic home sites and a Confederate earthwork from the Civil War,” he said. 

At the sites along the Little Alligator River and Albemarle Sound, remains of fishing pound nets in the water were found as well as small scatters of artifacts from 19th and early 20th century houses and farms that used to line the shoreline of Albemarle Sound. Remains of a sunken ship were found during the underwater survey.

“Regrettably, there were no finds of any kind within our survey area in the Scuppernong River,” he said.

Seibel explained that this kind of work is important to North Carolina because it can help the state understand the types of archaeological resources present at Hammocks Beach.

“The more important aspect of the work is determining which of the archaeological sites along the shorelines of the park are under the most environmental threat and providing recommendations about how the state can prioritize preservation actions to help protect the most vulnerable archaeological sites and help preserve them for future generations,” he said.

In addition to the archaeological survey work, Seibel said they’re including a shoreline assessment to let the state know the types of environmental threats the archaeological sites at the park are under.

The assessment includes looking at historic and present-day data to determine the level of shoreline erosion that has taken place over the past 100 years or more, as well as projections for future erosion and other threats. This information is being used to help assess which archaeological sites are at the most risk and provide recommendations to the state for preservation efforts.

Ropp said the survey is not only going to be the baseline to gather the data of what’s at these locations and what they look like, but also testing out the methodology.

Coming out of this work will be foundational data for these areas as well as a way to perform this work, and come up with a methodology that can be adjusted as needed.

Combining AECOM’s management strategy suggestions plus boots on the ground, “we can come up with a means to manage and mitigate and adjust to these coming changes,” Ropp said.

Southerly said this work is going to be valuable in the long term because the methodology can be further developed to collect data about the different types of shorelines that “you would assume would probably be very similar” but are different, like the Alligator River and Hammocks Beach.

“You’re still coastal, you’re on the sounds, but putting tools in the toolbox so to speak, and having a methodology, having techniques, knowing what works, knowing what doesn’t work, lets us and lets other archaeologists once these reports are published, look at it and adapt and evolve the sites and that alone — other than figuring out what we’ve got here in North Carolina — that methodology, those techniques that can go into the field that someone else can use can help sites elsewhere, help someone else manage the sites collect the data before the sites become inundated,” he said.

Within this project, Ropp explained they plan to look at known sites across the coastal counties to see where they are in relation to some of these climate projections, particularly with sea level rise. “There’ll be a lot coming out of this project beyond the survey that we’re doing on the shoreline.”

Ropp and Southerly are encouraging the public to share any history or information about Hammocks Beach and the sites in Tyrrell County. Email the team at archaeology@ncdcr.gov.

A $3.6 million contract has been awarded to a Raleigh company to improve two sections of U.S. 64 totaling almost 12 miles in Tyrrell and Washington counties.

The state Department of Transportation awarded Rose Brothers Paving Co. of Raleigh the contract to work on two sections of the highway. The project can begin as soon as June 1 and is expected to be complete by Sept. 30, 2022.

A 7-mile section just west of Columbia in Tyrrell County and a 4.75-mile section between Millpond Road and Northline Road east of Plymouth in Washington County will undergo milling, resurfacing and remarking of the roadway.

The Washington County segment also includes a layer of friction course, while the Tyrrell County segment includes replacing and upgrading 20,000 linear feet of guardrail.

For real-time travel information, visit DriveNC.gov or follow NCDOT on social media.

Last of two parts

MANNS HARBOR — Back in1995, then-Gov. Jim Hunt reiterated his earlier promise to four-lane U.S 64 from Raleigh to Manteo by 2005. All of it has been done except the last 28 miles between Columbia and this community perched on edge of mainland Dare County.

Even so, the once 6-hour slog from the beach to the state capitol now averages a breezy 3.5 hours.

The N.C. Department of Transportation plans on fulfilling Hunt’s pledge and shaving a few more minutes off the trip by completing that last section of U.S. 64. The agency says that the road must be expanded to four lanes to prevent accidents and make hurricane evacuation faster. A draft environmental impact statement was released last month.

The study includes 19 different alternatives and outlines numerous conflicts and tradeoffs.

In Tyrrell County, for instance, northern alternatives would result in fewer relocations of homes and businesses, but going to the south would avoid the Alligator community and create less impact to natural resources. Other concerns include impacts to the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, J. Morgan Futch Gamelands and other managed lands, and to wetlands, Outstanding Resource Waters and other natural resources protected by federal or state laws.

“We are encountering complex and seemingly competing environmental laws,” said Ted Devens, DOT’s project manager. “I think one of our challenges is to bring all the stakeholders to the table and seek an appropriate balance that reflects the least environmentally damaging and practical alternative.”

From Columbia to the Alligator River bridge, Devens said, most of the conflicts are less complicated and more manageable. But on the Dare side of the river, it seems nearly every conflict imaginable comes into play.

There are issue pitting federal and private property rights and conflicts with historic and cultural features. In East Lake, DOT may have to contend with the Environmental Justice Act, a federal law meant to lessen a project’s environmental effects on poor and minority communities, and the National Register of Historic Places, which protect historic buildings.

There are red wolves and red-cockaded woodpeckers that are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act. There are protected wetlands in nearly every direction. Depending on the alternative chosen, the widening could affect as few as 40 acres of wetlands to as many as 100 acres.

And as hard as it is to contemplate, there are deep, mucky canals that will have to be relocated. That means the canals lining the road, which are essential for drainage, will be have to be dammed, pumped out, mucked out, filled and re-dug alongside whatever new road configuration is built.

But that’s not all.

“Construction will be difficult,” Devens said, not surprisingly. “We are considering sea- level rise with this design. So the new highway will be at least four feet higher than the existing highway.”

And that means, he said, that while the new highway is being built up, largely from the muck pumped out of the canals, the still-open old highway will be four feet lower in elevation. Temporary barriers will have to be placed between the old and new roads.

New wildlife crossings, small tunnels to large openings, will be installed that allow animals to pass under the highway, rather than risk an unfortunate encounter with speeding tires.  The design has been effective in Washington County, Devens said.

Two earlier academic studies had determined animal activity along the road. Dead animals struck by vehicles numbered in the thousands every year in both counties, including deer, bear, fox, bobcat, raccoon, wild turkey, snakes, frogs, turtles and “a surprising number of birds of prey,” Devens said.  One red wolf was found dead last year. Just in Tyrrell County alone, for example, seven bear, 885 turtles and 25,000 amphibians — and many equally unlucky snakes apparently in pursuit — were killed on the 55-mph road over a 2-year period.

“Right now, the highway has no permeability for wildlife,” he said. “We feel that if we do this right, this road will represent an enhancement over the existing conditions.”

But the main purpose for the road widening is hurricane evacuation, Devens said. The project has been designed to allow 18 hours, night or day, from the first car to the last car, a timeline that is legislatively mandated.

Construction of the 3.1-mile Lindsey C. Warren Bridge over the Alligator River is targeted to begin in 2014 and be completed in about two years, Devens said. The Tyrrell County half of the road is expected to start in 2016 and the Dare County half should start in 2018.  Both ends of the highway will each take about two years to complete.

When the bridge is completed, it will look a lot like the Virginia Dare Memorial Bridge, with its high span, but it will have a wider bike lane.

East Lake residents just hope their community will still be there at the foot of the new bridge.

“I tell you, my home — I don’t worship it,” said Minnie Spruill, who is just shy of 89 and East Lake’s oldest resident.  “But my home is priceless to me as long as I’m here. My home is for the family. I said, ‘They can’t give me enough money.’”

Open houses on the draft environmental study will be held April 23 at Columbia High School auditorium and on April 24 at East Lake Community Building from 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., with a formal presentation at 7 p.m.

• Are those evacuation numbers for real? See Todd Miller’s blog, Sounder.