Join Nathan Marcy, our Senior Federal Lands Policy Analyst, on a trip to a complex of North Carolina National Wildlife Refuges with the Cooperative Alliance for Refuge Enhancement (CARE). Learn more about what we’re doing to protect federal lands at https://www.defenders.org/federal-lands-conservation
Video Transcript:
Hello, I’m Nathan Marcy with Defenders of Wildlife. I’m a senior policy analyst in our National Wildlife Refuges program. Right now, I’m sitting on a beach at sunrise in North Carolina’s Outer Banks.
But I’m not here on vacation.
I came here with other members of the Cooperative Alliance for Refuge Enhancement or CARE to visit refuges. CARE advocates for the refuge system to receive the funding it needs to fulfill its mission.
For years the Refuge System has been underfunded, leaving it understaffed and under managed. Some refuges have even had to close entirely.
Together with my CARE partners, I visited a complex of refuges here in coastal North Carolina, including Pea Island, just a couple of miles down the beach from here, Alligator River, Mattamuskeet, and Pocosin Lakes.
These refuges contain diverse habitats including beaches, marshes, peat soil forests, and lakes.
They support wildlife including nesting sea turtles, flocks of migrating waterfowl, and the only wild population of the endangered Red Wolf.
These refuges all require active management to maintain their wildlife value.
While visiting the refuges the CARE partners met with Refuge System staff to learn more about the management challenges and opportunities.
We’ll take what we learned back to our organizations and continue working together to ensure that the Refuge System always has the resources it needs to be a safe home for wildlife.
Defenders Of Wildlife works on the ground, in the courts, and on Capitol Hill to protect and restore imperiled wildlife and habitats across North America.
Defenders Of Wildlife
