Local expertise is driving the restoration of North Carolina’s peatlands, boosting natural defenses against rising seas and wildfires. Communities and conservation efforts are playing a key role in protecting vital wetlands from the impacts of climate change.
Swamp, bog, marsh, quagmire, these are all names we know and use to describe the seemingly soggy, undesirable lands found as you approach North Carolina’s coastline. What many people don’t know is these areas are invaluable peatlands, and could be the answer to many climate crises low-lying coastal areas are facing.
Wendy Stanton has worked for the Fish and Wildlife Service for 30 years in North Carolina, and a longtime resident of Tyrrell County, she returned to Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge as refuge manager in 2023.
“I had to come back to this refuge, it is just a very special refuge. The age of the peat is over ten thousand years old.”
So, what are peatlands? Pocosins? These “ancient soils?”
They’re a type of wetland and these soils contain a high proportion of partially decayed organic matter capable of retaining an incredible amount of carbon. Despite only covering 3% of the Earth’s surface, they store more than twice the carbon as all the world’s forests.
“And we have been restoring the peatlands to the greatest extent we can, since it was established back in 1990.
When the Fish and Wildlife Service purchased the refuge, restoration became crucial. For centuries, these peatlands were severely ditched and drained for agriculture and harvesting LobLolly Pine. This ditching and draining destroyed thousands of acres of peat soil.
“When it’s in an artificially drier state from drainage, you end up getting peat fires, and that can destroy the seabed, so it takes a long time for that to recover.”
Stanton said that despite peatlands being a fire adapted ecosystem, in a natural situation, the fire would burn across the surface. So having large areas of dried peat, keeps the area at risk for ground fires, which can last months.
The infamous Allen Road Fire burned nearly 100,000 acres of land and in 2008 a bolt of lightning struck the Pocosin Refuge
and started a fire that burned for three months, destroying over 40,000 acres of peat in the Pocosin Lakes refuge. Stanton said the refuge is trying to restore the peat to its natural state, before it was ditched, drained and then burned.
“It’s all about rewetting the peat, stopping artificial drainage, promoting or mimicking to the greatest extent possible the natural hydrology or sheet flow across the refuge.
We climbed one of Pocosin Lakes’ fire towers, looking out over Refuge Area 1, which was recently fully restored.
“As far as your eyes can see, it is restored peatland, restored Pocosin wetland. It consists of over 37,000 acres of restored peatland.”
Stanton said this restoration is a culmination of local, state and federal organizations coming together. These partners are working to completely restore the remainder of the refuge’s peat, as the impacts of climate change are looming.
“Because of climate change, there seems to be an increase in catastrophic wildfire, due to drought situations, severe thunderstorms, and so, by rewetting the peat that's going to reduce that risk for catastrophic wildfire.”
150 miles away, the Angola Bay Game Land sits on the border of Duplin and Pender Counties. The Nature Conservancy’s Coastal Wetlands Restoration Lead in North Carolina, Eric Soderholm pulls his truck onto Wiggins Road, one of the refuge's main access points.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awarded the Atlantic Conservation Coalition over $400 million. The North Carolina chapter of The Nature Conservancy will use $67.8 million from the grant to restore an estimated 33,500 acres of peatlands across North Carolina and Virginia while protecting an additional 10,500 acres.
“This is a huge opportunity for immediate reversals of active emissions, so the goal is to keep this carbon in the soil and in the ground, and out of the atmosphere.”
The project at Angola Bay is centered around mimicking the natural tendencies of peatlands, and using minimally intrusive tactics to improve the flow of water across the grids of peat. Soderholm said it takes a lot of collaboration to ensure that the team is implementing the right strategy.
“So a lot of different strategies that we can throw into the mix and tweak, and to come up with what we think is going to be best for the needs of that site.”
One of the strategies being used to manage the hydrology at both Pocosin Lakes and Angola Bay, is a flashboard weir control structure. Soderholm said each weir structure is placed in the main collector canals at the south western corner of each grid and connects the entire refuge of peat.
“You can see this culvert pipe is going underneath the road and out flowing and heading downhill, so we’re looking south or downhill.”
Soderholm said the weir technology is inherently adaptable, which means they can customize their approach down to the individual grid of peat.
“We can change what the effective drainage height is by altering the board levels in these structures. And that’s something that you can refine and tweak over time.”
Although this technology is being implemented over thousands of acres, Soderholm said it is extremely important they monitor the results and feedback closely at each weir site, to ensure lasting restoration.
“Built into all the projects that we work on, is an assessment phase after the hydrological restoration is done, to determine, did we get it just right? Like, are we holding water a little too low or a little too high? So that we are effectively creating seasonally saturated conditions as would have happened naturally across these pocosin areas.”
The big picture of restoration down to the nitty-gritty details, Soderholm said it’s so important that the team partners with the local communities who know this land better than anyone, to source their knowledge, materials and labor, giving opportunity for local stakeholders to work first-hand on restoration.
“Building on the local institutional knowledge of this place. The fella who installed these is from just a couple of towns over in Chinquapin, and he lives right across the road from the depot that we worked out of for most of his career.”
Sonderholm said engaging with local stakeholders ensures that the state and federal institutions are being good stewards to the land and resources that are so vital to coastal North Carolina culture. Because we aren’t just losing peat, we’re losing people’s homes and livelihood.
“I think that’s how we can most effectively connect with people around these places is to highlight what we’re losing when we lose some of these places. You know, it is very personal. There’s these broader benefits to the planet, but it is also very regional and special for this place as well.”
As we stood in the stillness of Angola Bay, Soderholm said restoring pocosin ecosystems is essential, so future generations can appreciate and cherish these areas just as those before them have.
“You know, the more time I spend out in places like this, the more I love them and I want them to be here for my daughter, to be a part of her life. And go and find an area where cranberries are growing. I mean, how many people get to do that? And this was a part of the cultural experience in the coastal area for as long as we’ve been around.”
And the culture of coastal North Carolina is a point of pride for so many who have been here for generations and those who have grown to call it home.
Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership policy and engagement manager, Stacey Feken coordinates with local, state and federal stakeholders on North Carolina restoration, protection and engagement work. Feken said it can be challenging to deal with a vulnerable landscape that so many people rely on for their livelihood.
“At the end of the day, you can do mitigation measures, and put in best management practices, and adaptive mechanisms, but that area is still flat and the climate is changing. And those are going to be hard conversations to have.”
These hard conversations are grappling with the realities of climate change. As a part of the collaborative team, Feken said their primary goal is highlighting local knowledge from the people who live, work and play on this land.
“And trying to figure out how to have those conversations and understand people’s perceptions of those issues. That’s been part of our discussions as well. But that’s where going back to the local expertise and really sitting down with people who live and work there, and do have these conversations on a day-to-day basis.”
Feken said, this work is personal, and this land means so much to so many people. That’s why the team says community engagement is so vital, to ensure research and policy changes are centered around what the land and people of eastern North Carolina need.
“That’s the area in which they live and they want to protect that. Whether it’s protecting wetlands, or protecting agriculture, the communities, and the towns and the counties. That was something we really tried to get out of the community engagement. What can we all agree on?”
“Show people this is not a study that’s just going to sit on a shelf, because that was something we heard early on too. Making sure how this is done is done in a way that helps the resource managers, local governments, and communities that live there.”
North Carolina’s Executive Order NO. 80 put climate change resiliency at the forefront of people’s minds. But Feken said the conversation has to be continued, and recent funding from the Inflation Reduction Act and EPA is helping prioritize peatland restoration and climate resilience throughout eastern North Carolina.
“I mean you’re going to have people who never believe in climate change at the end of the day. It’s the fact that climate and resilience are becoming more of a public conversation at a national, local, state, regional scale has helped.”
Each grant and funded project supports a specific organization, but all work toward a shared goal: restoring North Carolina’s pocosin ecosystems. These efforts aim to protect communities from rising seas and floods, ensuring that these valuable environments endure for future generations to enjoy and learn about.