Posted on September 9, 2024
The (NCWRC) and Corps of Engineers have been working on a project to restore Sandbag Island, a waterbird nesting island near Cape Lookout National Seashore for more than a year.
Waterbirds, which often need a sandy habitat for nesting, are finding fewer spaces to raise their young as development on the coast of North Carolina continues. It’s why the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission (NCWRC) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have teamed up to restore a special island habitat for those birds.
The (NCWRC) and Corps of Engineers have been working on a project to restore Sandbag Island, a waterbird nesting island near Cape Lookout National Seashore for more than a year. Sandbag Island provides a nesting habitat for several species of waterbirds, including American oystercatchers, brown pelicans and herring gulls.
Representative said that recent storms have led to rapid erosion, causing the island to shrink from roughly 2 acres in 2019 to less than one-tenth of an acre last winter.
The Corps already had plans to dredge the neighboring channel that runs from Harkers Island to the ocean, but it needed places to put the dredged materials.
The two groups decided to remove material from the channel via a pipeline and pump it to what remained of Sandbag Island. To protect nearby submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV), important for fisheries and as foraging habitat for waterbirds Corps staff and the dredging contractor placed floating turbidity curtains, which look like a shower curtain suspended from pool noodles with weights at the bottom, in the water surrounding the work area. This prevented sand and water being pumped onto the island from reaching the SAV.
Within days of the project’s completion, two pairs of American oystercatchers had established territories on the island and soon laid nests, according to wildlife representatives.
National Park Service staff are helping NCWRC monitor the nests.
