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 Pender 

 County inventory was conducted in 1981 and was financed by 

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

 the Pender County survey because of the potential environ- 

 mental impacts of peat mining and other energy-related 

 development. 



The recommendations made in this report by Steven W. 

 Leonard and Richard J. Davis 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 pre- 

 servation mechanisms to protect the ten outstanding or ex- 

 emplary 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. 



Steven Leonard and Richard Davis are experienced field 

 biologists, with intimate familiarity with the ecological 

 resources of the project region. The investigators were 

 exceptionally well qualified to identify, 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 and salt 

 marshes, that fringe most of the county's shoreline, and 

 which, for the most part, are ecosystems protected through 

 state and federal regulatory programs. 



