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 Hyde 

 County inventory was conducted in 1982 and was financed by a 

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

 Hyde County survey because of the potential environmental 

 impacts of peat mining and other energy-related development. 



The recommendations made in this report by J. Merrill 

 Lynch and S. Lance Peacock 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 management and preser- 

 vation mechanisms to protect the seven outstanding or exemplary 

 natural areas described in the 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. 



Merrill Lynch and Lance Peacock are experienced field 

 biologists, who have previously been employed with the N.C. 

 Natural Heritage Program and are most familiar with natural 

 habitats throughout the North Carolina coastal plain region. 

 The investigators were exceptionally well qualified to iden- 

 tify, describe, and evaluate the most outstanding natural 

 areas of the project region. 



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. Consequently, 

 the investigators were advised not to report extensively on 

 the large expanses of brackish marshes, or on lands and waters 

 protected and administered by the U.S. Department of the 

 Interior. The Hyde County inventory excludes three categories 

 of natural environments possessing important ecological re- 

 sources. 



11 



