Crash Course

“In 2002, 2003, and 2004, we informed Navy staff and their contractors that red wolves are expanding into the immediate area,” the memo continued. But the Navy’s June 28, 2006, draft supplemental EIS stated that the OLF site doesn’t contain red wolf habitat, an assertion Fazio describes as “completely false.”

You have to be extraordinarily lucky to encounter a red wolf. Not so with much of the other refuge wildlife, especially waterfowl in winter. “I sure wish you had come when the birds are here,” said Albea as we waited at the entrance of the refuge for its manager, Howard Phillips. I told Albea I preferred high summer, that I had seen wintering geese and swans at other refuges, and while they’re certainly impressive, making the ground shake when they explode into the air, then blocking the sun, they tend to dominate and suppress.

Presently Phillips pulled up in his truck, delighted at the chance to get outside and show off the wildlife habitat he tends and loves. Canfield and I rode with him, while Carter, Roth, and Albea followed in Albea’s van. We stopped at various points of interest: the moist-soil units where ribbon cane, sedges, smartweed, wild millet, and other annuals favored by waterfowl are encouraged; the ag units where cooperating farmers get to plant corn, paying for the privilege by leaving 20 percent for bears and waterfowl; Pungo Lake; the old fire tower . . .

The refuge was devoid of other human visitors and silent save for birdsong, the clacking of cricket frogs, and the hypnotic buzz of cicadas. This near-total absence of human-caused sound is a resource, too—and not just for wildlife.

Like Fazio, Phillips isn’t afraid to talk about the risks the Navy plans to take with the public’s wildlife. When I asked if he and his staff had any concerns about the OLF, he said: “We’re concerned about noise. Will that cause the birds to make a shift? And if their off-refuge food source is removed [as per Navy plans], they’ll have to find other places to go. The big question in my mind is what will the OLF do to Pungo Lake as a roosting site?”

A different, more subtle beauty emerges here in summer. It may manifest itself in the perky bobwhite quail that eyeball you, then lower their heads and dash; the spotted fawns that bound after their mothers, staying on the dirt roads for hundreds of yards because cover on each side is so thick; the sunbathing yellow-bellied sliders, three times the size of my Yankee basking turtles; the spectacular, yellow-banded Palamedes swallowtails (the signature butterfly of our southeastern swamps) that flit across your path at the rate of about one per minute.

On the shore of Pungo Lake, a shallow 2,800-acre depression thought to have been burned into the peaty soil by ancient wildfire, we encountered a swarm of broad-winged dragonflies. I’d never seen anything like it. There were hundreds. Derb Carter identified them as wandering gliders, a species that rarely touches down by day and that sometimes crosses to Europe.

From the top of the fire tower we gazed out over the refuge, gaining new appreciation for its size. Pocosin is Algonquin for “swamp on a hill.” So dense is the endless, wet jungle of titi, red bay, sweet bay, loblolly bay, wax myrtle, and pond pine that humans can’t walk through it for any distance. That’s why wildlife is so prolific. Now the loblolly bay was festooned with white, magnolia-like blossoms. At all compass points and as far as we could see, the woods looked like they were clutching wet snow.

The silence of the refuge is even more dramatic from the fire tower. But as we stood there a pair of F-15 Strike Eagles thundered in from the Dare County Bombing Range, hugging the northern horizon, then banking over our heads. Jet flyovers are much quieter than takeoffs. Even so, the din was appalling.

WHAT YOU CAN DO