click photo to view photo gallery
Carteret County, North Carolina
Funded in FY2023 through the National Fish Habitat Partnership Program
This project, led by the North Carolina Coastal Federation, creates one acre of salt marsh from farmed land to create a “donor” marsh to provide thousands of scarce native saltmarsh plants to sustainably enable future restoration, and to improve water quality in Ward Creek and other coastal waters. This project completes one of the final steps of the restoration of 6,000-acres of wetland habitat within the North River Wetlands Preserve. The goal is to return farmland to its original state of forested, freshwater and tidal wetlands, restore the water quality of downstream estuaries by treating runoff from upstream farmland, restore watershed hydrology and trap sediments, bacteria and nutrients.
Wetland marsh in North Carolina has declined significantly in past decades, starting with the push to ditch and drain wetlands to turn land into agricultural fields. The Division of Coastal Management determined that an estimated 80,000 acres of coastal wetlands are being lost on average each year, up from 60,000 acres lost a year during the previous study. Additionally, restoration efforts in North Carolina are often hindered by a dearth in native marsh grass plants available to purchase.
North River Wetlands Preserve | North Carolina Coastal Federation (nccoast.org)
Text and images provided by the North Carolina Coastal Federation