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 Carteret 

 County inventory was conducted in 1980 and was financed by 

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

 the Carteret County survey because of the potential environ- 

 mental impacts of peat mining and other energy-related 

 development. 



The recommendations in this report by John Fussell and 

 Jeannie Wilson are advisory. Their inventory and recommenda- 

 tions are designed to help state and federal agencies, county 

 officials, resource managers, landowners and developers 

 work out effective land management and preservation mechanisms 

 to protect the 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, 

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

 National Marine Fisheries Service, and Environmental Protec- 

 tion 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. 



Jeannie Wilson and John Fussell 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 un- 

 disturbed 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. The investigators did not 

 report on the barrier islands composing Cape Lookout National 

 Seashore (Core, Portsmouth, and Shackelford islands). 



iv 



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