Ducks Unlimited and partners recently completed wetlands restoration work in east-central North Carolina funded in part by a North American Wetlands Conservation Act (NAWCA) grant.
“This project focuses on enhancing emergent estuarine habitat, a decreasing wetland type,” said Craig LeSchack, Ducks Unlimited director of conservation programs. “These wetlands provide feeding habitat for many wetland-dependent species including migrating and wintering waterfowl in the Atlantic Flyway, neotropical migrants and other migratory and non-migratory waterbirds.”
This grant is an important part of ongoing conservation efforts in coastal North Carolina and improved habitat on both public and private lands in the Neuse-Pamlico region including more than 1,000 acres within the Goose Creek Game Lands.
“This area provides some of the most important managed habitat under state ownership for northern pintails and American black ducks,” LeSchack said. “In addition, the area is at the southern end of the breeding range for black ducks, which nest on the Goose Creek Game Lands.”
Like all Ducks Unlimited projects, the partners involved in the Neuse-Pamlico project made it possible.
“This is a unique project because it provides a solution to protecting the habitat values and management capabilities of several of a limited number of emergent estuarine marsh impoundments along the North Carolina coast,” said Tommy Hughes, supervising wildlife biologist-coastal region public lands with NCWRC.
The proposal area also ties into current wetland conservation efforts funded by a previous NAWCA grant, thus providing landscape-scale wetland conservation.
“This proposal will aid in linking these areas by enhancing a valuable and distinct emergent estuarine habitat system,” Hughes said.
