come in and clearcut an area of its 

 original hardwoods, cedars and other 

 such trees," Canada says. "Then, they 

 plant these sycamore plantations here 

 in the swamps and pine plantations 

 on the pocosins. It's their way of 

 making sure they've got plenty of 

 timber in the future." 



A good hour's drive to the south, 

 David Kitts, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife 

 Service ranger, bounces his truck on 

 a similar dirt road. 



Kitts points out the barren 

 landscape of one of the largest tracts 

 of publicly owned pocosin swamp in 

 the world. It's the new Pocosin Lakes 

 National Wildlife Refuge near 

 Creswell. 



Encompassing thousands of 

 acres in and around lakes Phelps and 

 Pungo, the refuge is the latest effort 

 to save these valuable wetlands from 

 destruction by timber companies and 

 big-time farmers. 



The truck slows down as a 

 family of raccoons crosses the road 

 and disappears into the thick roadside 

 cover of sweet bay and gallberry. 



Later, a fresh set of black bear 

 tracks in the middle of the road gives 

 Kitts and his riders good reason to 

 stop and take pictures. The bear isn't 

 visible through the shrubs, thickets 

 and pond pines of the pocosin. But 

 the tracks give evidence that he'd 

 passed that way only minutes before. 



Both Canada and Kitts are 

 keepers of wetlands, those fragile and 

 diverse ecological communities that 

 some experts say are important to the 

 well-being of coastal waters. 



Yet there are those who say 

 wetlands are good for one thing and 

 one thing only: harvesting and 

 growing timber for a nation hungry 

 for wood pulp and lumber. 



Therein lies the controversy. 



When European explorers first 

 set foot on North Carolina's vast 

 coastal plain forests, they were 

 amazed at the seemingly endless 

 expanse of nature's timber bounty. 



These men couldn't imagine that 



all those trees would ever fall prey to 

 the axe and saw of man. 



It wasn't until this century that 



Clearcutting off 

 valuable wetland 

 forests has come 



under fire. The 



\ 



plantation system of 

 renewing those 

 valuable timber 

 resources — growing 

 trees on vast "tree 



V 



farms" — is gaining 

 more and more 



opponents. 



/ 



The question is 

 simple, yet attracts 

 no easy answers: 

 How do you keep up 

 with the demands of 

 a timber-hungry 

 nation and keep 

 wetlands intact? 



people developed technology that 

 would allow them to sustain profitable 

 forays into the magnificent stands of 



cedar, cypress, poplar and other 

 species that dominated the landscape. 



Only then did clearcutting in Tar 

 Heel coastal wetlands become a 

 reality. 



And only in the past few years 

 has that type of forestry met the 

 scrutiny of the public eye. 



Clearcutting of valuable wetland 

 forests has come under fire. The 

 plantation system of renewing those 

 valuable timber resources — grow- 

 ing trees on vast "tree farms" — is 

 gaining more and more opponents. 



The question is simple, yet 

 attracts no easy answers: How do 

 you keep up with the demands of a 

 timber-hungry nation and keep 

 wetlands intact? 



Until recently, no one argued 

 much with the timber companies. 

 They provided valuable jobs in 

 poverty-stricken coastal counties. 

 Though some people have blamed 

 paper mills for many of the ills in 

 coastal waters, the timber industry 

 was eager to renew the profitable 

 resource. 



Now environmentalists and 

 other anti-timber groups have an 

 easier time finding fault with the 

 plantation system of growing trees 

 on wetlands. 



Though recent studies have 

 shown that plantations do not cause 

 serious damage to a wetland 's ability 

 to filter and purify water that eventu- 

 ally finds its way into coastal 

 estuaries, environmentalists say 

 water quality is not the only issue. 



They believe that a pocosin or 

 other wetland turned into a pine 

 plantation is no longer viable and 

 productive as a wetland. 



So the two sides have drawn 

 battle lines. The battleground is a 

 5,000-acre tract of wetlands in the 

 remnants of the once-vast (100,000 

 acres) East Dismal Swamp in 

 Washington County. 



In a lawsuit filed recently for the 

 N.C. Wildlife Federation, the N.C. 



Continued 



COASTWATCH 1 I 



