PREFACE 



The North Carolina Office of Coastal Management and the 

 North Carolina Natural Heritage Program, both units of the 

 Department of Natural Resources and Community Development, 

 have commissioned a series of natural areas inventories for 

 ten counties in the coastal zone of this state. The Brunswick 

 County inventory was conducted in 1981 and was financed by 

 a Coastal Energy Impact Program (CEIP) grant. CEIP funded 

 the Brunswick County inventory because of the potential 

 environmental impacts of peat mining and other energy-related 

 development. 



The recommendations made in this report by Timothy D. 

 Nifong are advisory. His inventory and recommendations are 

 designed to help state and federal agencies, county officials, 

 resource managers, landowners and developers work out effec- 

 tive land management and preservation mechanisms to protect 

 the twenty-one outstanding or exemplary natural areas de- 

 scribed in this report. Agencies such as the N.C. Division 

 of Environmental Management, Division of Land Resources, 

 Division of Marine Fisheries, Wildlife Resources Commission, 

 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Army Corps of 

 Engineers, National Marine Fisheries Service, and Environ- 

 mental Protection Agency should find this report useful, as 

 may university researchers, private consultants, and private 

 conservation groups. The Office of Coastal Management will 

 use the report in assessing permit applications and for 

 federal and state consistency reviews. 



Tim Nifong is an experienced field botanist with 

 familiarity with the ecological resources of the project 

 region. Nifong, previous to the survey, had been con- 

 tracted by the Natural Heritage Program to inventory 

 selected sites in Brunswick County. Those earlier survey 

 reports were updated and included in this compilation. 

 Nifong is a native resident of Wilmington and, at the time 

 of this project, was a doctoral student in the botany pro- 

 gram at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

 The investigator was well qualified to identify, describe, 

 and evaluate the most outstanding natural areas of the 

 county. 



The project investigator was instructed to identify 

 natural areas that contain highly unique, endangered, or 

 rare natural features, or high-quality representations of 

 relatively undisturbed natural habitats. Because of the 



