All right.

I love getting to watch these stories on the big screen with real humans in a room.

It's very fun.

So thank you all for joining us in person and online today.

I'm so glad so many of you can be here with us tonight.

I'm gonna take a quick minute to shout out some people who are in the room who are instrumental in bringing these stories to life.

For Overview, we have producer Lex Trust somewhere in the house tonight.

Let's give a little... there he is right there.

A round of applause.

And also stoked to have Eric Shepard who is in that first story with us tonight.

He drove quite a ways to come hang, so thank you Eric.

My Sci NC colleague Evan Howell is also somewhere in the audience.

He produced that second story you watched tonight.

And I'm also stoked to shout out videographer extraordinaire Will Cooper who drove all the way from the coast also.

He filmed both of those Sci NC stories and got some real practice filming birds as they tried to fly away from us.

And it really takes a team effort to bring all of these things to life.

So there's big teams behind all this incredible content we watch tonight.

So thanks for that.

We have a lot of coastal expertise in the house tonight, and while the stage... we're set up on the stage, so I'm gonna have our panelists come up and I'll introduce y'all as you get up on stage.

We'll start off with Lindsey Addison.

You saw her on screen collecting bird poop tonight.

Lindsey... [Applause] Lindsey's been with Audubon North Carolina's coastal biologists since 2011.

In this role, Lindsey and her staff manage and monitor 40% of the water birds that nest on North Carolina's coast.

She serves on the American Oyster Catcher Working Group's steering committee, coordinates North Carolina's statewide oyster catcher banding program, and collaborates with academic and agency partners around the state on science and monitoring projects.

And I just want to say that I appreciate you for having to sign Oyster Catcher so many times.

That's probably a tough one.

Really appreciate you all being here, both of you.

Next we have Pete Campbell.

[Applause] Pete retired as a project leader with the US Fish and Wildlife Service's National Wildlife Refuge System in 2019.

For the last seven years of his federal career, he oversaw the management of three refuges in eastern North Carolina, Mattamuskeet, Swan Quarter, and Cedar Island.

Prior to that, Pete was stationed for 12 years in the North Carolina Sandhills, where he served as the service's Sandhills Red Cockaded Woodpecker Recovery Biologist, and the coordinator for the North Carolina Sandhills Conservation Partnership.

And last but not least, we have Chuck Peoples from the Nature Conservancy.

[Applause] Chuck is a North Carolina native and conservation leader.

He's deputy state director for the Nature Conservancy for North Carolina, and he leads the state's conservation strategy, oversees a multidisciplinary team, and helps set strategic priorities.

His leadership has driven major natural climate solutions at scale, including the expansion of peatland restoration to more than a hundred and ten thousand acres.

And his work integrates science, policy, and community impact to build resilient landscapes across North Carolina and beyond.

So I'm gonna go sit over there with them.

All right, everybody hear me?

Great.

Okay, so just a heads up, we have, we do have people in the audience running around with microphones, so I'm gonna ask them a question or two, but we really want to hear from you all, so be thinking about what you want to ask.

And also if you're tuning in online, we have someone monitoring the chat, so please write your questions in and, is that, where is Tatiana?

So I look at her.

You're over there this time.

Okay, great.

Well, we'll go to those online questions whenever we have a few.

So what I found really cool and not very surprising as I talked to all of you last week, was that there's a lot of overlap.

You all know each other or know of each other because you're all working together on the coast on issues that really overlap.

So I'm excited that you're all here tonight.

Let's start with Lindsey.

So Lindsey, this event is North Carolina coast themed, but secretly it's pretty bird themed.

Audubon works around the globe to protect all the natural resources that birds depend on.

What are some of the things about our coast in North Carolina that make it awesome bird habitat?

And what are some of the challenges birds face on our coast?

Okay, great.

Yeah, so at the sites that we manage, there's a variety of different habitats that these coastal nesting birds rely on.

And one of the things about them is that they tend to be kind of habitat specialists.

So they're looking for very specific types of habitat and you can kind of think about a habitat generalist, I said specialist, but you can think about a generalist like a raccoon.

It's going to be perfectly happy living in a woods, in your crawlspace, maybe in your attic.

It would probably live in your house.

But so they're very adaptable.

These coastal nesting birds are looking for specific types of habitat.

So the black skimmers are a great example of birds that really are dependent on barrier islands.

So they want open bare sandy habitat.

And part of the reason for that is they want to get away from those mammals, those habitat generalists, because the mammals tend to want to be in the vegetation.

And they feel more comfortable there with the birds.

They're going to feel more comfortable away from the mammals because the mammals will eat their children.

That's generally frowned upon.

So it's a lot of it has to do with habitat.

And so with our developed barrier islands, if you were in the museum and you looked at the kind of the exhibit, you could see that that there's a lot of changes to our coast.

So there's these special places that inlets that support these open sandy spits.

And that's where we banded and and work with the skimmers both on Cape Lookout National Seashore, which is a natural barrier system, and then also on Wrightsville Beach, which is a developed barrier island and it's very special because we can manage those skimmers there.

And then with those those habitat requirements come the challenges.

There are places where people want to recreate.

There's there are places where we do a lot of different types of coastal engineering projects.

Some of those projects are beneficial and some of those are not so beneficial.

So we face a lot of challenges, habitat management and people management.

But it's the habitat, the special types of habitat that attract those birds.

And the skimmers are examples of kind of open sandy dependent birds.

Very cool.

To my next page and hold the mic.

Okay, so Pete, we're talking about habitats.

There's many designations under which we protect North Carolina coastal habitat, but a major one is a National Wildlife Refuge, which you have managed.

What does that mean?

What what is the National Wildlife Refuge?

How is that protected and what are the parameters?

And then we have a lot of them on our coast, which you told me about, so I'd love for you to share that.

And how is that linked up with waterfowl, the refuges themselves?

Yes, and it's alive.

In Eastern North Carolina, we have nine National Wildlife Refuges and predominantly all of them were established to manage for migrating waterfowl.

First and foremost.

I love what Lindsey said.

There's two components that really spill over to management of any lands, in particular National Wildlife Refuges, is we manage the habitat for the critters and we manage habitat for people to access and to enjoy.

So you have to manage that human element as much as you are managing the habitat for the wildlife.

And that includes things like your standard visitation to view wildlife.

There's also a lot of multi-use in refuges.

There, as an example at Mattamuskeet, there is a hunting component, limited waterfowl hunting component, that had started since the refuge was formed in 1934.

You've got other uses that sometimes, like out of Pea Island on the beaches, where you have a lot of shorebirds, that can conflict with protecting and managing habitat.

So as refuge managers, we have that challenge of finding that balance.

And we like to say National Parks and people's viewpoints were created for people to enjoy nature and refuges, we basically created them for the critters.

Oh, yeah, but humans can also enjoy them as well.

So that is really the biggest challenge.

The other thing you saw at Pocosin Lakes, they were talking about the cooperative farming program.

And that is huge.

But on other refuges, that does not exist.

As an example, Mattamuskeet, we had a 3,000 acre lake with an average depth of about three feet, which is perfect habitat to grow aquatic vegetation for geese and for swans.

But we do not have any opportunity to farm the land.

So we relied on the private land and the farmers around us to grow winter wheat, as an example, for winter crop to support these birds.

Well, interestingly enough, you have to also incorporate the idea of economics where these local farmers could no longer plant that wheat.

It was not economically viable.

And so that food source that you heard John and Wendy Stanton talking about, all of a sudden, does not exist around many of the refuges.

They have to rely on natural habitat.

So that is another challenge that we have, along with, and I am sure we will touch later, changing climate and what that means.

Yes, and so just because I thought it was a really cool fact, is it that North Carolina has, we have 40% of all refuge territory on the East Coast is in North Carolina, up and down the whole coast.

We have 40%.

That is right.

And actually, it is some of it, and we actually manage those refuges from Virginia all the way down collectively, and not in isolation, because these birds have a tendency, depending on the weather, to move from one refuge to the other.

We have birds moving from Mattamuskeet to the Pongo unit, back and forth.

So you have to collectively manage them together as sort of one large ecological unit, if you will, when you are talking about wintering waterfowl.

Birds don't really care about state lines, and I am glad that we are so lucky to have all these resources on our coast, both for the wildlife and for us as humans.

Chuck, tell me a little bit about the conservation and restoration work that the Nature Conservancy does in North Carolina, and how were you all involved in the creation of some of these refuge and reserve systems on the coast?

Yes, thank you so much for having us here tonight.

I am still a bit enthralled with just the visuals.

It is so incredible, the work to see and how fortunate we are in North Carolina to have the lands, the habitat, and the birds that we were able to just joyously watch tonight.

That is why I grew up feral in eastern North Carolina.

I have to tell you a little bit of an origin story.

I am from the Roanoke River, northeastern North Carolina.

I did my first wildlife research project studying red wolves at Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge as an undergraduate.

So I make that connection for you.

Here I was a junior at NC State, down in the middle of Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, but it only became a National Wildlife Refuge since 1984.

And so that tract of land, over 140,000 acres that we now have in public land ownership, public land management, that tract of land was a gift, a donation, from Prudential Life Insurance Company through the Nature Conservancy to the federal government.

So when you ask me about my work, you know, at the time when I was living in the middle of the refuge with the red wolves, I didn't know about the Nature Conservancy.

And it was only reflecting on my career and my time in places like that, do you see the conservation estate that we create, really, from the mountains to the coast?

And it's that conservation estate, those lands that we've conserved, that we now work with agencies like the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Division of Coastal Management, and others to help manage for birds like skimmers, or the restoration of peat in Dismal Swamp.

The Great Dismal Swamp Refuge was a gift to the Nature Conservancy in 1972.

And so Eugene Camp Corporation, a lumber and paper corporation, actually donated the core of Dismal Swamp to the Nature Conservancy, and we worked with the federal government to bring it into the refuge ownership.

So it's that power of place and of conservation.

And within the state of North Carolina now, we've conserved, the Nature Conservancy's conserved, 746,000 acres.

That's roughly the size of Rhode Island.

It's Mecklenburg, Forsyth, and Chowan counties combined.

And over 600,000 of those acres are in public lands that you get to enjoy, recreate on, or go see the remarkable waterfowl.

So when we think about, you know, our work and the enduring qualities of nature, we don't just think about protecting the place.

We think about restoring the ecological function and the habitat.

And that habitat then provides critical needs for, like, the black-billed skimmers.

So all of this just ties together so wonderfully for me.

Yeah, there's so much overlap, and I'm so thank you all for all of the incredible work that you do to keep these things around for all of us to see.

Do we have any questions yet in the audience?

Got a hand up right in the middle.

Great screening.

We really enjoyed it.

First question is for my two boys.

You know, at their age, they are very excited to see the poop.

So first curiosity is, what did you learn from the poop?

And what kind of funding, research, you are doing that you get a support to do all this research along the coast?

So that's number one.

And number two is we live in West Cary, near Tobacco Trail.

We see a lot of swamp, you know, in Old Cali, Chapel Hill.

You go all the way to the South Point, you see the swamp.

That keep us wonder, are we exposed to the similar fire risk?

Is there any similar infrastructure to keep the water in the swamp?

Thank you.

Very good questions.

You want to start with the poop question?

We'll start with the poop.

This is a great question, and children especially appreciate poop.

But um, yeah, so what we learned from the poop was inside the poop is the DNA of the whatever organisms they most recently ate.

And so when we sent the poop samples off to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, they basically ran it through a PCR machine.

So just, it's basically identifies the genetic code or segments of the genetic code within the the poops.

And then, and you have to understand that our collaborator who does the analysis is Dr.

Gemma Klukus, and she's from England.

And so she has a very proper British accent, so when she says the word poops, it sounds much more high-tone than when I say it.

And I can't imitate her, so I won't try.

But um, so basically identifies segments of the DNA that are then matched up to a genomic library of basically a bunch of different species.

In the case of black skimmers, it's fish primarily.

And so we just recently got our data back and we found that we sampled from three different colonies that year.

And at the colony that you saw up on the screen, about 80% of the fish that they were eating were mullet, which is a common schooling bait fish.

They swim along the surface, so it'd be just the kind of thing that a skimmer would catch, because they get their name from how they forage.

Their lower mandible is longer than their upper mandible, and they are able to acrobatically skim right across the surface of the water.

They had some clips in there.

They got some great video in that segment showing how they forage.

And if they, when their lower bill touches anything, it snaps shut.

So those chicks were eating mostly mullet, and then it was, they also were eating some silversides and kind of a mix of some other things, croaker and even some pinfish.

Now the other two colonies that we sampled up at Cape Lookout National Seashore had a larger diversity of species.

There were 12 species found in the Wrightsville Beach poops, and at the colonies in North Core Banks, there were 17 and 15 different species.

And they were a more evenly distributed mix of species.

It included the mullet, and I believe they were the most abundant in, but more on the order of 20%.

And then we had croaker, actually quite a bit of pinfish, which I didn't know there was a use for pinfish.

That's a, that's a fisherman joke.

Pinfish are the little guys that nibble your bait off, and you never get to catch anything else.

So they're a bit of an annoyance if you're an angler, or at least if you're a bad angler like me.

But um, so that was the type of stuff that we, that we found in them.

And so what we're doing is we're continuing to sample the poop.

So we did it again, we're doing it again this year.

And the year that you saw in the video was funded by North Carolina Sea Grant, so shout out to them.

They have a great mini grant program that funded the the lab analysis for Gemma to go ahead and do the PCR work, identifying the segments of DNA that matched up to the genomic library of different species of fish.

This year is being funded by the Carolina Bird Club, which is an organization in North and South Carolina.

It's bird watchers who get together and, and not only do they enjoy bird watching, but they want to give back, and they have a grants program.

And we're very fortunate to receive funding from them to again fund the the analysis.

And of course a lot of our other work, we're a 501c3 nonprofit, is just through donations from the public.

So, so you know, we we apply for grants usually to fund specific projects like this particular science project.

But it's a lot of fun, and I really appreciate the question, and and it's it's okay to be interested in poop.

Yeah, I don't know if that stops that childhood.

I feel like it continues.

We're all curious.

Do you want to talk about swamps?

Maybe what's unique about what was happening on the coast with the drained peat and related to swamps that we might be seeing closer to this area?

Yes, that was a very good question and certainly an observation coming out of this video.

And just to put in perspective the fire that you saw at Great Dismal Swamp, during the period from 2008 to 2011, there were four fires on National Wildlife Refuges.

Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge burned, Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge burned, Great Dismal Swamp burned twice.

Now, again to put that in perspective, that cost 56 million dollars to put those fires out.

And those fires burning in those deep organic soils called peat, were the equivalent of running 17 coal-fired electrical plants for a year.

That's how much carbon was emitted from those fires.

But that's because these peat soils are very special.

They're 50% carbon and primarily organic.

So the wetlands you see here in the Piedmont are typically along streams and rivers and they're floodplain wetlands and mostly on mineral soils.

The coastal plain of the eastern North Carolina, the part where when you're driving to the Outer Banks, you think you should have already been there an hour ago.

Because you see nothing but water and bridges.

That's the wonderful part of our landscape that holds these Pocosin peatlands.

And that's actually a globally rare ecosystem type called Atlantic White Cedar, Pon Pon Pocosins.

And those peat soils formed over 10 to 12 thousand years and they can be up to 12 feet thick.

And some of the fires that burned, and actually there was really good footage in the dismal swamp scene, where you're looking across a bunch of charred stumps and it's standing water.

That's because that fire burned down two feet into the soil.

So that rich carbon soil that's full of organics when it dries out becomes flammable and burns underneath.

But not the same here in the Piedmont.

I would say in general the best thing with all of our wetlands is to keep water in them.

That follows more of the natural patterns of water flow either through rivers or rainfall.

And that's one other neat fact about these Pocosin peatlands is they don't get water from rivers or from the sea.

They only get what comes from the sky.

So when in the video they talked about the 47 to 50 inches of rain that we get in eastern North Carolina, the key is holding that precipitation, that rainfall on site as long as you can.

Our tendency as humans is to try to get water off the landscape as fast as we can.

That unfortunately is not good for wetlands and one of the things that we've been trying to correct on these really critical ecosystems.

Awesome.

Yes, a different type of soil here and on the coast.

We have another question over here.

Yes.

Hi.

So I watch PBS on a daily basis.

I was telling my daughters as a child we used to have Mutual of Omaha Animal Kingdom and so your presentations and shows kind of fill that that void in a wonderful way.

So for my future grandkids, I'm curious what campuses you all attended and what majors you were in when you were in your, you know, being educated.

Career paths.

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you.

I could start if they're interested in me too.

Maybe.

I actually I do have a science background.

So I studied biology, wanted to be a marine biologist, found out I get really seasick and that made me start thinking about other options.

You can also be a coastal biologist though.

You never have to get on a boat and be a marine biologist.

But I always loved photography and so I also studied photography in school and ended up combining them into science communication, which is what I do now.

And I went back and got a journalism master's and now I work at PBS.

You know, it's that easy.

Just do that.

You want to go ahead?

Sure.

You know, as I said, I grew up really feral in eastern North Carolina, but I was fortunate to find NC State and the Wildlife Science Program there.

I started, quite honestly, as a vet major because I was enraptured with James Harriet's books, All Creatures Great and Small.

Went to NC State thinking I'll be a veterinarian and quickly realized that I probably didn't want to deal with the, not the pets, but the people with the pets because we all have that anxiety about bringing our pets into a vet.

And so I decided I would deal with the work with critters that had no voice for them.

So I became a wildlife biologist.

Interesting, not well-known fact.

I went to NC State.

You talk about cross-pollination.

I was just calculating while we were sitting here that Chuck and I have known each other for 40 years.

Okay, when we were both NC State and then, you know, I moved on and he went one track, went the other.

It's fascinating because then throughout, Chuck at one time was, you know, the Roanoke River guy for TNC.

I applied for that job.

Chuck got, Chuck didn't, the other guy got it, then Chuck got it after the other guy and I wound up with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, but I went to NC State and I really wish there was a fisheries and wildlife program back in 1970, you know, but so I was a zoology major, but we did, we did, it was emphasis was fisheries and wildlife and a lot of hands-on.

But if, I don't know if anybody's ever seen these wonderful little posters that go around about, you know, what I do and what my family thinks I do, you know, as a biologist where, you know, it's, you're out there wrestling an alligator or this and that, but what you're really doing is sitting in front of a computer putting in data.

And that's exactly what happens.

You have to realize, and we try to educate people that are going through the college curriculum right now, that it's, it's, you know, whether it's conservation biology or straight wildlife or fisheries, that it's not all fun and games out in the field.

You have to, you know, suck it up buttercup and you have to sit down and get that information and analyze it to make a real difference in the world of wildlife or conservation biology.

But we, when I was with the Fish and Wildlife Service, I was tasked with trying to recruit young students.

I recommended we try to recruit and gain interest in high school juniors and seniors to go to college who can then fill the ranks of those of us who retire, as I have done.

So, wonderful opportunities.

The world is wide open and tell your kids if they enjoy something, go after it with all the passion they have.

Yeah, I went, I went to school in Florida, so I'm ruining the potential NC State trifecta, but I went to a school called Stetson University.

It was founded by the hat guy and Florida Gulf Coast University.

I studied English and biology as an undergrad and then I went and got my Master's of Environmental Science and I have, you know, a lot of the kids that we have worked with that we've hired as seasonal technicians or as you know, students that we've we've collaborated with doing their their honors theses or their their master's projects.

They've come from, they've come from NC State, they've come from UNC Wilmington, other folks that have worked with Audubon have come from ECU, App State, so so lots of different schools.

I think one of the big things you could do if you're if you're a young person interested in getting into the sciences is it's not too early just like just like was said before to get started, you know in your in your summer breaks, volunteer or find internships and you know get your hands dirty, do some hands-on stuff.

It doesn't have to be exactly what you think you want to do.

All types of experiences are useful.

You might learn something you know is interesting and fun for you that you didn't realize was interesting to you and you'll get it.

You'll get a good perspective on on on what the field is really like.

I did have to put the poop data into a spreadsheet.

That was not as much fun as getting the poop.

But it's so and and another thing I'll say if you're interested in working in wildlife as a biologist or in the field is is it's very useful to be able to operate machinery, hand tools, those practical things.

This is kind of a white collar blue collar job where you know you have to have the knowledge and the schooling, but you also need to be able to you know you might need to drive four-wheel drive and drive stick shift or operate a boat and opportunities to learn those skills are valuable too.

So I would I would kind of take it as a holistic approach and it's definitely not too early to start you know on your summer breaks or any other opportunities that you have to get out there and kind of see what it's like and help you guide your decisions as you move into your future.

Yeah, and one thing I would just add and because all of this is is really incredible information and it is really about following your passion, but I'll also say conservation is a business and it when somebody has a passion and they may not be trained as a biologist, but they're a paralegal or an attorney we employ accountants, communicators, we employ you know our attorneys help us get all of our land transactions done.

So everything from finance to legal work, if you're if you have a passion around conservation, it takes the whole business to get the work done.

Awesome advice.

Let's hear if we have any questions from online.

Tatiana?

Yeah, hello.

We do have some questions online really quickly covering since we're talking about getting into the field.

Maggie asks what happens if you wanted if you're you know a little as an older adult and want to get a certificate or other credentials, how can somebody get started?

Turning into a career fair up here.

I love it.

Does anyone have an easy answer for that?

There is there may be master naturalist programs in your area.

That's a great way to to kind of continue your education.

We have run into I've run into master naturalists in my work and those are usually adults that have you know, they're very passionate and about education and about the outdoors.

There's Project Wet, Project Wild, programs that are put on by extension agents.

There are master naturalists, other ways to engage.

I think really looking out for programs environmental education, you can get an environmental educators certificate as well.

It's a great place to jump in.

I mean the other thing you can do if you if you're not really tied to getting a certification but just in building your skills to become if you're not already a bird watcher and your local Audubon chapter or bird club will offer free bird walks and you just have to do some googling and get out there and it doesn't have to be with other people you could teach yourself.

But it doesn't take much to get get into bird watching and then that's a whole other you know level of knowledge and skill that you can develop over a lifetime.

And as far as the federal government is concerned there are a number of agencies that have volunteer programs and during that volunteer program you absorb a lot of knowledge from the biologists or the visitor services people that you work with that is is worth a whole lot more than you know trying to sit in the classroom or absorb from something online.

You you really embrace it you're immersed in in that environment for a good amount of time and there's tons of opportunities.

You can go from one to another to another and different curriculums like they're talking about and I just want to echo what Chuck said with the Fish and Wildlife Service.

We're not just a bunch of biologists.

We have real estate people.

We have lawyers.

We have people that communication is critical.

As a refuge manager I can tell you that my people had most of the fun and I spent most of my time on human element side the management of human activities as well as I'll be honest controversy caused by different viewpoints within the surrounding communities of these refuges.

You can learn even that when you're when you're volunteering.

And absorbing and get a well-rounded appreciation for that kind of work.

Awesome.

Any other questions Tatiana from our online audience?

Yeah, I'm gonna combine two of them.

One asks how exactly do temperatures impact bird birds breeding times and nesting habits and do the skimmers return to their nesting the same nesting area every year?

Okay, this is a common question.

I'll take the the last one first.

So talking about site fidelity and that's one of the things we wanted to learn with the banding is you know we have a kind of declining number of black skimmers nesting in the state and so we wanted to know if we were getting chicks recruiting back into the breeding population in their third or fourth year when they when they mature and are ready to start a family of their own and so far from our banding our observations of banding birds the answer is yes.

We do see I was just out at the south end of Wrightsville Beach earlier this week and we saw some of the same chicks that we banded in 2018 and 2019 back as adults making their little scrapes in the sand courting their mate with the delicious fish.

So yes, they do have site fidelity and they do often tend to come back if they were successful at a colony site in one year they tend to come back the following year.

They're not dummies and they can live to be quite old over 20.

So they learning benefits you if you're a long-lived species.

As far as temperature, temperature stress is actually one of the most important factors that birds have to worry about when they're nesting.

The surface temperature of the sand on a hot sunny day can exceed 150 degrees Fahrenheit and you know this if you've forgotten your flip-flops.

They're just gotten excited and kicked them off and then had to cross the burning white expanse to get to the water.

So they spend a lot of time shading their eggs as opposed to merely incubating them.

So if it was a cold night they'll be sitting with their skin in contact with the eggs and then during the day they'll be shading those eggs or the young chicks that can't yet thermo regulate themselves.

As far as temperatures, maybe you're thinking about influencing the timing of their nesting.

A lot of birds migration their cues are its day length.

So that'll kind of give them the idea.

Okay, I need to start moving whether it's north or south depending on the season.

But we do see sometimes if it's been a warmer spring some species like the American oyster catchers that we monitor tend to start nesting a little bit earlier.

We had our first nests on the Cape Fear River from American oyster catchers a week or so earlier than in a cold than than in a more typical cooler spring.

So it can it can have some influence too on the timing of when they start but a lot of what triggers birds and other animals migratory and behavioral patterns is day length.

Very cool.

I love this.

We're getting deep into the bird biology here.

You have another question in the room?

Hi, I was just wondering we're kind of in a time where research and science don't seem to be super valued.

Sorry, are you guys finding that there's any issues in getting funding or grants for this type these types of research projects or like going out and finding or having students come to you and wanting to actually work on them because I know a lot of younger people kind of are bummed generally about the state of the world and the environment.

The fun question.

We were all gonna turn to Pete because he's retired.

[laughter] They still are.

Oh, you're serious.

They're still surveilling you?

They're still listening to your?

Okay, so I am retired.

I've been out of the game for a while, but I keep track of my my peeps that are still working and yes, there is a challenge.

There's been significant funding reductions in agencies that that have an impact on the the capacity to not only do research but to do management and that's a big hole because as I was explaining earlier in the coastal plain in particular if you let your guard down if you're managing waterfowl habitat there are invasive plants that can take over your waterfowl impoundment that you're managing and so forth.

If you blink twice you have a bad year weather-wise, boom, there it is.

If you don't have the management capability to keep up on that it negatively impacts the habitat available for those migratory birds that are coming down the Atlantic Flyway.

So I would say that right now my opinion and my good friend John Hammond is here who just retired earlier just this year is that we we're hopeful, but we're also pragmatic and from the point of view of the National Refuge System in North Carolina because I can say this, I'm retired, we're hurting.

We don't have enough people.

We don't have enough capacity to do the job and under the current climate right now, and I don't mean financial climate or political climate, I mean actually we're in a heck of a drought in North Carolina, right?

And I believe the estimation in the coastal plain is we need at least 12 inches or more to get out of the drought.

So instead of that 52 to 54 inches of rain, we're way down from that and when you start talking about these restoration projects to re-wet the peat, there are areas that may not have that emphasis on that research and management restoration that are drying up, basically are available fuel until we get out of this drought.

And to keep on top of that you have to have fire fighting capability within your organization.

If that's been trimmed down, that's a significant concern.

You certainly have a lot less biological capacity, but what I can say from my point of view is I always stay hopeful because the people that are still working in nonprofits or in the federal government or the state government, they're dedicated people and they're going to do everything they can to hold the line until times get better.

And I would add to that and echo that a lot of this work, it's on the ground work, whether it's posting nesting areas to prevent disturbance, by beach goers, doing controlled burns, managing invasive species.

It's a lot of on the ground work.

So staffing really does matter at any managed site.

I've personally seen funding opportunities that came from the federal government diminish or go away, which makes state funding opportunities like the land and water fund really important.

So that making sure that those things get included in the budget can make a huge impact on the type of conservation work that can be done and that can be funded in North Carolina.

So supporting state support, you know, that's more insulated from some of the more recent changes is something that, you know, we could do at the state level to try to maintain or hold the line on some of these conservation projects.

And there are friends groups.

There's wonderful friends groups and that can be very helpful and a pick-me-up.

We work with basically every state, federal, and other NGO that manages coastal birds.

And we see how having a volunteer or having an intern that maybe the friends group was able to hire does for the biologists just to have that extra pair of hands.

They're not the only person out there.

That could be a tremendously helpful too, but it's definitely a challenge.

But the folks that get into this kind of work, we tend to really be passionate about it.

And so I think no one's gonna quit.

We're just gonna have to try a little bit harder and hope for better days.

I think scientists are some of the most creative people I know at problem-solving.

So I think there's a lot of hope there.

Do we have any other questions in the room?

We got one right in the middle.

My question is for the skimmer.

When you catch the baby birds, do the adult birds attack you?

And is there any way I can come down and catch a few birds?

I love this question.

This is definitely... So skimmers are a little bit less aggressive than some of the other species that we work with.

But yes, they do swoop at us.

It's very rare that a black skimmer will actually peck you.

I think it was the same black skimmer in the colony a couple years in a row where, when you went into the colony, into the area where the birds were nesting, there would be a skimmer that would come and just smash your head.

And one time I was driving off the island.

This was Wrightsville Beach.

I was driving off.

It's a public beach.

It's one of the most... You get on I-40 and you end up in Wrightsville Beach.

Anyway, I was driving off the island and I happened to catch my forehead in the rear of your mirror and there's a trickle of blood going down between my eyes and I was like, "Oh my gosh!"

It was worse than I thought.

But normally they don't.

There's another species called the common tern and they almost always peck you.

So they're very protective, each in their own way.

The species have different personalities.

So if you'd like to come see the black skimmers nesting on Wrightsville Beach, we offer free bird walks every Monday morning at 9 a.m.

And we also have volunteers called bird stewards that are there pretty much all hours of the day.

So you might not be able to come Monday morning at 9 a.m.

You might be in school.

I don't know.

So we do have opportunities to view them and it's a public beach.

You can come anytime, but it's fun to get to talk to one of the volunteers.

We do have volunteers help and observe the banding operation.

You have a parent with you?

So if you go to nc.audubon.org and you go to the About Us, there's a contact thing.

My name is Lindsay Addison.

There's an email address on there and shoot me an email.

Say I had the cute kid from the talk and we'll see if we can hook you up.

We do plan to do some poop collection and some banding and if you're interested in coming and see how we do it, we can talk offline, but shoot me an email, Dad.

Tatiana, any pressing questions from online?

Yeah, I do have one I think that I will see is are there any efforts in or what are the efforts to repair coastal wetlands to their natural condition?

Yes, thanks very much for that question.

So the work you saw at Great Dismal Swamp is one of those efforts.

That was a 12,000 acre restoration.

To date, the Nature Conservancy with partners like the US Fish and Wildlife Service or the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, we've now restored over a hundred and ten thousand acres of Pocosin Peat wetlands across eastern North Carolina.

And we've got another 35,000 acres that we're in process of restoring working through the engineer designs and everything it takes to to put restoration on the ground.

So it's a it's a big effort and there are a lot of other organizations, nonprofits, and agencies working to help make that happen as well.

And I'll just say I learned from working on another story about peat restoration in Pocosin that there's a large-scale effort, but also if you have property out on the coast that has peat that's been drained, you can work to restore it and there's some carbon incentive to that and everything.

I don't know if you want to talk about that a little bit.

Sure.

Ultimately, as we with the Nature Conservancy work to try to scale solutions, we call them natural climate solutions and peat in North Carolina is a tremendous superpower and really addressing climate change through carbon mitigation.

If you can reverse the drainage, you're storing carbon in these wetlands.

So you restore them, these peat soils stay in place, they don't subside.

When they're drained, they're losing about a foot every 40 years, which is the wrong way to be if you're also in eastern North Carolina with our rising seas.

So they're losing about a foot every 40 years in elevation.

And so we reverse that and so you're not losing that carbon to the atmosphere.

In order to bring other actors and financial instruments into the equation, we created a carbon methodology.

So you've heard of voluntary carbon offsets.

So there's a voluntary carbon offset methodology that project developers who do carbon projects can develop a project under this methodology and voluntary carbon credits created can be sold.

And so we the Nature Conservancy sponsored that effort because we wanted to bring other opportunities for private landowners and for other actors to be able to work in this space.

The key is money, bringing money to it.

It helps a lot in conservation when you have funding.

Do you have, I think we have time for maybe one more pressing question in the audience.

Many years ago, I was a research student at NC State in the Marine Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Department.

And I was working on developing a sea level curve for Jarrett Bay, North Carolina near Cape Lookout.

And so I was out there in the muck getting boring holes of peat and trying to do some radiocarbon analysis on it.

And of course back then it was very controversial.

Climate change, we called it global warming, which was such a misnomer.

So I'm still very interested in sea level rise and feeling a bit like Cassandra seeing what I was researching 30 years ago coming to fruition much quicker than we thought.

So how does sea level rise impact our coastal systems and impact your ability to conserve the environment?

Thank you.

Yeah, I think all three of us can certainly add context to your question, which is a really good one.

But one of the things, the changes that you're reading about most now are called ghost forests.

And anytime you drive Highway 64 or 40 down to 140 into Wilmington, you can see ghost forests where we had Pon Pon, Pocosin, Atlantic White Cedar Forest like we've been talking about tonight.

And due to salt water, the changes in salinity, and due to changes in water levels, those trees have died and now it's becoming marsh.

And so what we see is pretty vast conversion of what was forested wetlands fringing our sounds and estuaries, now changing over to marsh, tidal marsh, and in some places being lost because the rate of change is faster than marsh establishment.

And a great example of that actually is at one of the refuges I managed, which is Swan Quarter, National Wildlife Refuge, right on the Pamlico Sound.

And we had projects with non-profit Nature Conservancy and also Coastal Federation to create--we were losing a lot of the shoreline.

It was being converted to ghost forests, both with the overwash when you have hurricanes and the saltwater intrusion as the freshwater actually, you know, level goes down, right?

You have saltwater wedges coming in.

So the answer, and the non-profits are doing this a lot all up and down the coast, is living shorelines.

And what those living shorelines are supposed to do, and you start out--you can start out with oyster shells and so forth--and start to get it to be more organic and alive, is it protects the the coastal side, not the water side, from intrusion and reduced wave energy and also reducing the potential for that saltwater intrusion to reduce the amount of conversion over the marsh habitat and the loss of the actual forested habitat.

So that's been going on up and down, and a lot of refuges are involved.

Alligator River has a project, like I said, Swan Quarter, and other places that are specifically more not so much related to peat restoration, but related to trying to hold the line.

The interesting thing is we have actually in Swan Quarter, out in Pamlico Sound, islands that are part of the wilderness program, federal wilderness program.

We're losing that.

They're being eaten away every single year from sea level rise and, you know, wave attenuation.

And there's nothing you can basically do about that.

And a lot of those on the refuge, colonial nesters require that, and their habitat is shrinking because of sea level rise.

So anything that we can do on federal lands and to then show as an example to private landowners what to do to basically try to mitigate as most we can that saltwater intrusion through these projects is going to be beneficial in the long run.

Yeah, those islands, those small, isolated, remote islands that don't have the mammalian predators are super important for all kinds of nesting coastal birds, the species that we manage.

So we've been installing some living shorelines on the Cape Fear River, and I think Sci NC is going to come out with a program about living shorelines.

I happen to know one of the folks that was involved in installing it.

So if you stay tuned, you could see examples of that type of work.

On barrier islands and more sandy shorelines, you know, sea level rise and climate change, you know, kind of work in concert.

If you have, everybody's very taken with king tides, right?

Every moon is now like the blood wolf purple.

It's very meaningful.

I mean, it used to just be the full moon, but now we have all these special moons.

And with this, you know, we have the king tide, which is the highest high tide cycle of the monthly tide cycle.

And so if sea level rise is, you know, is a little, makes the ambient water level be a little bit higher, and then you add a king tide on top of that, that height is just that much more.

And you have these low areas, these low, relatively flat areas, like the skimmers like to nest on.

That can create just enough flooding that you can have a loss of a colony due to those factors.

Barrier islands are dynamic.

The ones that are not developed move and change in response to storms and tides, and that can create habitat as well as destroy it if the barrier islands can move and change.

A great book about this is called "The Beaches Are Moving."

It's over 40 years old, but it is extremely relevant to today's coastal world.

And I'll just close.

The other thing that can happen with these increased flooding is people can decide that they want to, you know, pursue maybe some less helpful engineering projects to try to stabilize islands or try to, you know, lock these barrier islands in places when it's the natural coastal processes that really help them continue to exist and maintain good bird habitat.

So, you know, structures like terminal groins ultimately end up being worse for shorelines.

They don't really protect much of, they protect a very small area of shoreline and cause a lot of damage, down drift of them.

So there's not only just climate change or sea level rise, but then the decisions that we make in response to those factors that can have positive or negative impacts.

If it's things like living shorelines or trying to help the marsh keep pace with sea level rise, it can be, our actions can be positive, but our actions can be less helpful if we pursue coastal policies that are not as beneficial or, you know, kind of trying to be the little Dutch boy with his thumb in the dike.

It just doesn't work over time.

So how we respond to these challenges is almost as important maybe as the challenges themselves.

Awesome.

That's so well said, Lindsay.

Thank you.

We are coming to the end of our time together, so I just want to say I appreciate the plug.

You saw content from two different PBS North Carolina shows tonight, and there's a lot more out there from both of those shows.

So please check us out.

We're online.

You can stream us on TV.

We are on your actual TV, if you have a TV that still gets broadcast.

And those shows are Sci NC.

We've been on the air for over a decade, I think now.

Lots of great content there.

An Overview, which you can find on YouTube.

And that show, the story that you saw tonight is actually a sneak preview.

It's not even online yet.

It hasn't even premiered.

So stay tuned for that to come out, and you can find that on YouTube.

And just go to PBS North Carolina's website to find all the other great content we create.

So we're going to do, since we're basically out of time, rapid fire closing questions.

So succinct answer.

I just think I like to leave people with something.

We've talked about a lot of great things that you can do.

You can get involved.

You can volunteer.

I just want to leave people with something they can do.

So if they want to get involved, support our incredible refuges and wildlife on the coast, what's like a top thing in your mind that they could do to get involved and do that?

I would say get in touch with your local Audubon chapter.

Go on a bird walk.

Learn about their conservation initiatives and volunteer.

It can be planting a tree.

It can be doing a bird count.

It can be getting involved with some invasive removal.

I love, I'm from southwest Florida.

We have so many invasive plants.

Get involved with removing some invasive species, improve bird habitat, or finally I'll leave you with plant a native tree or shrub in your yard.

It'll feed the birds and it'll give you beauty and enjoyment into the future.

I really could say, yeah, what she said, but I think two things.

One is if from the point of view of the Fish and Wildlife Service, if there is a friends group that is part of supporting a refuge like Alligator River, I would definitely look into joining that.

And there's opportunities that the friends themselves create to do volunteer projects on those refuges.

Or there are programs to directly volunteer with the refuge to do work on the ground if you happen to be within a geography that would be easy to get to that.

And just to be clear, it's not just a group of friends.

There's organizations that are friends of Alligator River Wildlife Refuge that you can get involved in.

Good clarification, yes.

I've had the opportunity this week to spend time with TNC's, the Nature Conservancy's, chief scientist, Dr.

Catherine Hayhoe.

She's written books about climate change.

Mostly she focuses on people talking to other people about what's happening in the world around them.

Please do that.

Express your love for nature.

Do that through how you spend time in the outdoors, how you take family and friends into the outdoors.

Develop love of nature in others.

And then spend time talking about it with people because everyone I find that I communicate with loves clean water.

Everyone I find that I communicate with loves critters in nature.

And they want to know that those spaces are there.

So also take time to share with your elected officials how important conservation funding is in North Carolina.

We're a very fortunate state.

We have conservation trust funds.

We need to keep them, keep them alive, keep them funded, and keep putting lands in public ownership so all of you can get out, enjoy it, and tell the story.

Incredible.

Lots of great ideas.

Thank you all so much for sharing your time and expertise with us.

And thank you everyone for joining us tonight.

Have a great night.

Get home safely.

[Applause] I just got to sit here and listen, that was great.