Mill Tail Creek or braving the mos- 

 quitoes and the yellow flies to hike 

 deep into the woods. 



There, you may glimpse deer, 

 wood ducks, raccoons or perhaps an 

 alligator or two. And if 

 you're lucky, you just might 

 see a black bear or maybe, 

 some local residents say, 

 the shadowy figure of the 

 eastern cougar, thought to 

 be extinct. 



These are just some of 

 the wild things on the nearly 

 150,000 acres of dense, 

 forested wetland that is the 

 Alligator River National 

 Wildlife Refuge. 



Lying just a dozen or so 

 miles west of the motels and 

 beach houses at Nags Head, 

 the Alligator River refuge is 

 a wild, tangled place, criss- 

 crossed by drainage ditches 

 and nearly impassable dirt 

 roads. Access is difficult 

 without boats or four-wheel 

 drive vehicles. 



This remoteness is 

 exactly what makes the 

 wetland a good home for 

 wildlife. And its wildness 

 lures people to visit. 



"It's a very, very wild 

 area," says Manteo resident 

 and refuge fan Ken Dyar. 

 "Very primitive. And very 

 wonderful." 



The Alligator River 

 refuge was created in 1984, 

 when The Nature Conservancy ac- 

 quired 1 20,000 acres of land from 

 First Colony Farms, an agribusiness 

 consortium, and donated it to the 

 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 



The land is one of the last large 

 pocosin tracts in North Carolina. 

 Aside from the Department of 

 Defense's Dare County bombing 

 range, the refuge today covers an 

 entire peninsula, bordered by the 



Alligator River to the west, the 

 Albemarle Sound to the north and the 

 Pamlico Sound to the east. 



Since its creation, the Alligator 

 River refuge has gained recognition 



lyk) just a dozen or so miles west oj 

 the motels and beach houses at 

 Head, the Alligator River refuge 

 is a wild, tangled place, 

 crisscrossed hy drainage ditches and 

 nearly impassable dirt roads. 

 Access is difficult without boats 

 or jour-wheel drive vehicles. 

 This remoteness is exactly what makes 

 the wetland a good homejor wildlife. 

 And its wildness lures people to visit. 



through a landmark experiment to 

 restore the endangered red wolf to part 

 of its original range. 



But the Fish and Wildlife Service, 

 which runs the refuge, is working on 

 a lot more. It has projects to track the 

 American alligator. Dare County is 

 the alligator's northernmost range. 

 And it supports work to help the en- 

 dangered red-cockaded woodpecker 

 survive. A graduate student is taking 



an intensive bear census that could 

 help officials determine whether 

 bears could be hunted on refuge 

 lands. Fish and Wildlife officials 

 are exploring a project with the 

 Defense Department to 

 restore Atlantic white cedar 

 in the area. And biologists 

 are experimenting with 

 growing natural food for 

 waterfowl. 



Yet Fish and Wild- 

 life's biggest goal at 

 Alligator River doesn't 

 single out a specific bird 

 or animal. In what would 

 seem to be an overwhelm- 

 ing task, the agency is 

 attempting to restore 19th- 

 century water balances to 

 the pocosin. 



Since the turn of the 

 century, this wetland has 

 been crisscrossed by log- 

 ging roads and firebreaks 

 and sliced by ditches and 

 canals — all tools used to 

 prepare the land for food 

 crops or for tree harvesting. 



The tools worked, but 

 not without negative ef- 

 fects. Surface water levels 

 dropped, making the poco- 

 sin less hospitable to some 

 wildlife, most notably the 

 wood duck, which needs 

 shallow flooded areas to 

 breed. Rainwater raced into 

 the sounds in great acidic 

 slugs rather than filtering 

 slowly through the swamp. Drier 

 soils meant that fire — a natural part 

 of the pocosin ecosystem that is nec- 

 essary for perpetuating some plants 

 and creating food for wildlife — 

 became a greater danger. 



Still, the changes didn't alter the 

 essential nature of the area, says 

 Bob Noffsinger, deputy manager for 

 Alligator River and its subrefuge, 

 the Pea Island National Wildlife 



4 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1993 



