Coalition Shields Cape Fear Arch: Area’s Development Causes Big Concerns
By Steve Jones, The Sun News, Myrtle Beach, S.C.
Jul. 29–Look around you.
Everything you see either travels over, rests on or grows from a 35-million-year-old geologic aberration known as the Cape Fear Arch.
It stretches mostly along the coast from Cape Lookout, N.C., to Cape Romain south of Georgetown, a distance of nearly 300 miles. It wedges inland along the Cape Fear River to Fayetteville, N.C., and drapes around Florence on its way back to the coast.
An upthrust of land from the ocean rather than an accumulation of inland river sediments like most of the eastern and Gulf coastal plains, the Arch is home to dry, sand-based soils that harbor dozens of plants found in few, if any, other places.
In the last 18 months, the Arch has become a magnet for a coalition of environmental, conser-
vation, state and federal agencies in North and South Carolina that want to blend their individual strengths and experiences to save as much of the uniqueness as possible.
Members of the Cape Fear Arch Conservation Collaboration know they are facing a fast-growth situation in which they need to be nimble to be sure that their message gets out and their goals are accomplished. To focus their efforts, members now are beginning work on a formal plan of action.
Theirs will be a simple mantra: This is important. It should be preserved. Help us.
“We want to start generating an awareness that this is an area that deserves conservation attention,” said Dan Bell of the N.C. Nature Conservancy’s Wilmington office and a member of the coalition.
Members will work not only on the public, but they also will try to cajole, schmooze or otherwise persuade policymakers and developers to join the movement.
Already, perhaps 100,000 acres of Georgetown, Horry and Brunswick counties are owned or controlled by coalition members.
Much of Georgetown County’s South Island is owned by the S.C. Department of Natural Resources, as is the Lewis Ocean Bay Heritage Preserve in Horry County. Brunswick’s Juniper Creek preserve will be transferred from the N.C. Nature Conservancy to the state of North Carolina when it is opened to the public for hunting, fishing and hiking.
The Arch’s oceanward extremities — Cape Lookout and Cape Romain — are already parts of the National Seashore system.
Brunswick special
Some coalition members look at Brunswick County as the jewel in the crown. Tagged by the U.S. Nature Conservancy as the most biologically diverse place on the East Coast outside Florida, it has more of the rare plants growing within its nearly 900 square miles than anywhere else in the Arch.
Other places deemed important by coalition members include the Plantersville area of Georgetown County and the future I-73 crossing of the Little Pee Dee River in western Horry County. Similar priorities dot much of the rest of the Arch.
But the cross-state focus now is on the upper reaches of the Waccamaw River, the only river that originates in a Carolina bay.
The river forms much of the northwestern Brunswick County border before it flows into South Carolina. The South Carolina side already enjoys protection as the Waccamaw River Heritage Preserve.
Camilla Herlevich, Arch coalition member and executive director of the N.C. Coastal Land Trust in Wilmington, N.C., would like to see the effort duplicated in the Tarheel State.
Waccamaw Riverkeeper and coalition member Christine Ellis is working to set up a scenic canoe trail on the North Carolina side that will be similar to the one north of Conway in Horry County.
She’s now working with Brunswick County’s Planning Department to identify possible access points for the N.C. canoe trail.Public involvement
Arch coalition backing may become essential in getting private and public money for conservation, but it could be equally useful in other efforts, said Nancy Cave, director of the Coastal Conservation League’s north coast office in Georgetown and a coalition member.
Cave wants to use the Arch network to alert the N.C. Coastal Federation, also in the coalition, and its thousands of members to environmental dangers she sees from a proposed coal-fired power plant in Florence.
“I am hoping to tap into the Arch as I speak out,” she said.
The resultant outcry, she hopes, will halt the development.
The coalition unifies organizations that have specialized in environmental advocacy with others that focus on conservation and governmental groups that become the ultimate owners and guardians of some of the land. In the past, the organizations worked pretty much independently of the others.
Today’s political and financial environment, though, demands unified visions and shared goals, members said. Funding organizations, for instance, want to know that the money they contribute will serve a broader purpose as well as to preserve ecologically important areas.
“We can share our methods [with other Arch members] and they can share theirs,” said Matt Nespeca of the S.C. Nature Conservancy.
Increasing pressure
The unique plant life will come under increasing pressure as more people move into the undeveloped areas of the Arch.
Bill Harris, a geology professor at UNC-Wilmington, said he believes the Arch may actually be much older than some studies say. He believes it dates as far back as 90 million years and that it has risen and subsided throughout its existence. He is now working on a study to determine a timetable of its movements.
Structures like the Arch “don’t just move and then stay where they are,” he said.
A study done for the N.C. Natural Heritage Program theorizes that at least a part of the Arch remained ice-free during the last Ice Age. Because of that, the study says, plants from areas to the north and south migrated to the Arch and survived possible extinction.
The study also says it is likely that the cycles of fire that some plants in the Arch depend on continued while nearby areas were buried under the ice mass. The longleaf pine, for instance, relies on fire to germinate its seeds. Others, such as the Venus flytrap and pitcher plants, need the canopy burned away so they can get sunlight to grow.
Arch members meet every couple of months at Lake Waccamaw, the source of the Waccamaw River.
They’re just getting started, said Herlevich of the N.C. Coastal Land Trust. They’re still adding members.
There is no staff dedicated to the Arch, but Herlevich said that could change as the group hones its focus. Hiring someone to help them could result in the Arch becoming part of the public’s base knowledge of the area.
It will take someone dedicated to that education, just for the Arch.
“We all have [other] full-time jobs,” Herlevich said.
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Cape Fear Arch Conservation Collaboration members: The N.C. Nature Conservancy
The S.C. Nature Conservancy
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
The Waccamaw Riverkeeper
Winyah Rivers Foundation
The N.C. Coastal Land Trust
The N.C. Coastal Federation
The S.C. Coastal Conservation League
The N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources
The S.C. Department of Natural Resources
The Audubon Society of North Carolina
The Bald Head Island Conservancy
The Smith Island (N.C.) Land Trust
Brunswick County (N.C.) Planning Department
New Hanover County Planning Department
Brunswick Soil and Water Conservation District
City of Wilmington
Cape Fear Resource Conservation and Development Inc.
The Conservation Trust of North Carolina
Natural Resource Conservation Service
New Hanover Soil and Water Conservation District
N.C. Division of Coastal Management
N.C. Department of Agriculture
N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission
S.C. Natural Heritage Program
Southern Environmental Law Center
Contact STEVE JONES at 910-754-9855 or sjones@thesunnews.com.
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