Northeast Region Restoration & Education
The N.C. Coastal Federation works with numerous partners to link coastal habitat restoration with environmental education in the Northeast Region. The federation’s education program engages students and adults in projects to protect water quality and restore important coastal habitats. Our program strives to provide opportunities for individuals to take an active role in the stewardship of our coastal waters and habitats. Learn more.
Current Projects
Jockey’s Ridge State Park Marsh Restoration
Volunteers braved a blustery, cold day to bag oyster shells that will be used this spring and summer for the restoration.
The federation will be recruiting people
once again to plant marsh grass and haul oyster bags at Jockey’s Ridge State Park in Nags Head. This is the second phase of a project to restore habitat and protect the shoreline at the park. About an acre of salt marsh along 425 feet of shoreline has already been restored. The federation joined with park staff, the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries, The Nature Conservancy and hundreds of adult and student volunteers to do the work.
In the second phase, marsh grasses will be planted along more shoreline to further break down wave energy,
while also providing fish habitat and waterfowl foraging grounds.
Federation and conservancy volunteers, members of the Friends of Jockey’s Ridge
and students from First Flight Middle School in Kill Devil Hills will do most of the work. If you would like to volunteer, contact Erin Fleckenstien, our regional coastal restoration scientist.
This restored marsh will enhance nearby beds of underwater grasses and adjacent salt marshes and shrub thickets and maritime forests. That vegetation will, in turn, will protect the new wetland grasses from blowing sand. Created oyster reefs will buffer the marsh from waves. The natural system will function holistically to support fish, crabs and other estuarine creatures. More than 75 species of fish frequent the project area, as well as many invertebrates and shorebirds.
Money for the restoration projects came from grants from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Southeast Aquatic Resources Partnership, which is made up of state and federal agencies.
- View Power Point slide show on Jockey's Ridge project
Jockey’s Ridge Wetland Nursery Program 
Our restoration site on the soundside of Jockey’s Ridge State Park also serves as an outdoor classroom for our Wetland Nursery Program. Coastal Outreach Specialist Sara Hallas works with local schools throughout the academic year to teach the students about marsh and oyster habitats and ecology and their value in enhancing water quality. Eighth-grade classes at First Flight Middle School in Kill Devil Hills will grow wetland grasses in their classrooms from locally harvested seeds. In the spring they will plant the grasses they’ve grown (and several thousand other sprigs) at the site and help build a new oyster reef. Education programs at the park will be expanded to cover fisheries habitat protection and restoration.
Teaching Teachers About Building a Marsh
In April Northeast Region staff members will spend a week in Ocracoke leading a series of seminars at the N.C. Center for the Advancement of Teaching (NCCAT). During the week the teachers, local school children and local volunteers will restore a coastal wetland by planting marsh grasses behind a rock sill 700 feet long.
The NCCAT living shoreline project is a perfect blending of the federation’s restoration and education programs. Teachers will learn about the importance of wetlands in the estuarine system, while helping build the natural marsh that once fringed the site. The center occupies the refurbished Coast Guard station at the entrance of Ocracoke harbor. It faces a wide section of Pamlico Sound, where winds frequently generate rough surf. A low rock sill, being built this winter by Sampson Contracting, will break down high waves and create a calm pond where marsh grasses can be planted. Unlike a conventional bulkhead, the sill and plantings will stabilize the shoreline while still providing fisheries habitat. Agrant from Restore America’s Estuaries is paying for the marsh restoration and classes.
 NCCAT is a state program that rewards selected public school teachers with a week of seminars on the subject of their choice. The center on Ocracoke runs programs for teachers throughout the year.
Classes planned for the week will examine the role of wetlands in filtering stormwater, seining and kayaking programs, and nature writing, among others. They’re being designed to send teachers back to their classrooms with an increased understanding of coastal systems and fresh ideas for hands-on activities.
Partners in the project also include the N.C. State Office of Construction and Moffat & Nichol, the engineering firm that designed the living shoreline.
- View schematic of shoreline and planting
Partnership Re-Plumbing Part of Hyde County
Groups, including the N.C. Coastal Federation, joined together in 2004 to look for ways to improve oyster habitat along thenortheast coast. Three years later, this Northern Oyster Work Group identified an area in Hyde County along the Long Shoal River (map) as a prime target for habitat restoration.
This idea for restoring oysters in Pamlico Sound led federation staff to search for land-based restoration projects—and in the process spawned an unusual partnership between farmers and environmentalists.
It began in 2007, when a group of conservationists, scientists and staff from the state Division of Marine Fisheries identified sites off Hyde County, on the mainland west of the Outer Banks, as prime waters for restoring oyster reefs.
In Pamlico Sound, oyster reefs are being restored by placing piles of limestone marl and shell on the bottom in carefully selected sites. Reefs once rimmed the shores of Hyde County, providing estuarine habitat and good fishing. But most of the county (and the mainland) has been ditched and drained to create farm land. Before large numbers of oysters will again be able to live close to the Hyde shoreline, the amount of tannic stormwater coursing from canals must be reduced.
Through talks with Hyde residents and a county agricultural extension agent, NCCF staff identified two farmers who manage thousands of acres that drain to the Long Shoal River. The farmers want to keep some of their drainage in unused fields, so they can use it for irrigation and other farm management.
 From those conversations, an unusual alliance of farmers, environmentalists, and state and federal agencies was created. The N.C. Clean Water Management Trust Fund ponied up money to study whether it’s feasible to hold water in unused fields on a large farm and divert it away from Pamlico Sound. That study is ongoing.
A smaller hydrologic restoration effort has been completed on Mattamuskeet Ventures Farms. Funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Partners for Fish and Wildlife program, this project diverts water from one of the major drainage canals into 600 acres. Whatever water isn’t used for farm management will slowly seep into the ground and be cleansed by the soil. Water depths within the project area will be managed to create habitat for migrating shorebirds. And the water quality off Hyde County will be a little bit cleaner. Press release [ pdf ]
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