EASTERN CAROLINA NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE GATEWAY AND ADMINISTRATIVE COMPLEX

 

ROANOKE ISLAND

Eastern North Carolina and the Outer Banks specifically is an established destination, drawing a quarter of a million visitors a week during the summer season.  While the region is blessed with some outstanding natural resources for visitors to enjoy, one of the region’s best kept secrets is the world-class National Wildlife Refuges operated by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.  These areas offer visitors some unique ecosystems brimming with unusual waterfowl, plants, and waterways.  In spite of the refuges’ world-class out of doors, most visitors to the region are unaware of the opportunities to paddle, bird, hike and be witness to the endangered red wolf. 

In the view of Coastal WIldlife Refuge Society, this is an opportunity to connect people with nature in an experience that families will never forget.  To make this happen, the Society is actively pursuing funding to establish Eastern Carolina National Wildlife Refuge Gateway Visitor Center and Administrative Complex on Roanoke Island in dare County.  The Center provide a gateway to visitors, directing families to Mattamuskeet, Pocosin Lakes, Currituck, Roanoke River, Cedar Island, Swanquarter and Mackey Island Refuges, each offering its own opportunities to discover nature in an unbridled setting.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service owns 35 acres of undeveloped property near the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island, Roanoke Island Festival Park, The Lost Colony, the National Park Service’s Fort Raleigh, and the Elizabethan Gardens.  The addition of the Eastern Carolina National Wildlife Refuge Gateway Visitors Center would enhance the telling of America’s history by providing a place that recognizes the historical and environmental importance of the region which is the nation’s First Frontier. And the location could take advantage of the more than quarter of a million visitors that pay each year to visit the Aquarium and the thousands more that go to the other sites.

The Eastern Carolina National Wildlife Refuge Gateway Visitors Center is the highest ranked unfunded project in the US Fish and Wildlife’s Region 4.  In addition to providing a gateway for visitors to other refuges in the region, situating the headquarters in the same building would streamline the staff’s operations.  In addition, the funding would complete the original plan for the Walter B. Jones Center for the Sounds, scaled back due to funding shortfalls when it was completed in 2001. The Center is supported and promoted by the Partnership for the Sounds as part of a regional environmental education package on the Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula. The Center also serves as the visitor center for Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge and was designed to provide a premier environmental education experience for visitors to North Carolina’s Inner and Outer Banks and for students from the local area and across the state.