Posted on November 19, 2025
WILMINGTON, NC – There is a peace that many birds like the brown pelican and white ibis find along the Cape Fear River.
Lindsay Addison, a biologist with the Audubon Society, an organization that protects birds and their habitats, said 30% of the state’s coastal waterbirds nest on the Cape Fear River. But these nesting birds are under threat.
“These islands are subject to extreme wave energy from the passage of these large cargo ships,” Addison said.
Addison said that with each upgrade in the class of cargo ships, the larger the wakes that flood into these bird nests.
“So you have these big tsunami-like events that crash down onto the shorelines which degrades the habitat along the shoreline of the river and we see increased erosional effects,” Addison said.
