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Even though Tyrrell County has vast areas of relatively undisturbed 

 wetland, there are still threats to the wildlife and natural diversity. 

 One possible threat is peat mining but this will probably will not occur 

 very soon, at least not in Tyrrell County itself. The major threat has 

 been and still is land conversion for agriculture. By comparing present 

 field boundaries with the orthophotoquad maps, we determined that 27,160 

 acres have been cleared and converted to row corp agriculture since the 

 photographs were taken with most of this probably being done in the 

 latter part of the 1970' s. Much of this land was pine planataion that 

 had been cut and abandoned but other portions were swamp forest and 

 pocosin constituting high quality wildlife habitat. Hopefully, this 

 conversion is near an end and will allow present wildlife corridors to 

 remain intact. Further modification can only be detrimental to wildlife 

 populations while further alteration of runoff patterns could produce 

 major detrimental changes in the estuary. If the general soils map for 

 Tyrrell County is reasonably accurate, it would indicate that land 

 conversion is largely complete. Most of the soils that appear suitable 

 for agriculture have either been converted to that purpose or the land 

 is owned by timber companies which will maintain the land in pine pro- 

 duction. We certainly hope this proves to be the case and that most of 

 Tyrrell County's remaining pocosins, swamp forests, streams, shores, and 

 marshes can be preserved with minimal further change. 



