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 Tyrrell 

 County inventory was conducted in 1980 and was financed by 

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

 the Tyrrell County survey because of the potential environ- 

 mental impacts of peat mining and other energy-related 

 development. 



The recommendations made in this report by Dr. Charles 

 B. McDonald and Dr. Andrew N. Ash are advisory. Their 

 inventory and recommendations are designed to help state 

 and federal agencies, county officials, resource managers, 

 landowners and developers work out effective land manage- 

 ment and preservation mechanisms to protect the eight 

 outstanding or exemplary natural areas described 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 Environmental 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. 



Charles McDonald and Andrew Ash are experienced field 

 biologists, with respective specialties in botany and 

 zoology. The investigators, at the time of this project, 

 were faculty members with the Department of Biology, East 

 Carolina University. Both were well qualified to identify, 

 describe, and evaluate the outstanding natural areas of 

 the county. 



Project investigators were instructed to identify 

 natural areas that contain highly unique, endangered, or 

 rare natural features, or high-quality representations 

 of relatively undisturbed natural habitats, and which may 

 be vulnerable to threats and damage from land use changes. 

 The perspective taken by the investigators focused 

 strictly on the county, and their original ratings for 

 described sites did not attempt to assess the sites in 

 comparison to other similar habitats in the region. 

 Since the completion of the Tyrrell County survey, 

 additional natural areas inventories have been conducted 

 for the other counties of the Pamlico-Albemarle Peninsula. 



