Pine Island Audubon Sanctuary

I read somewhat recently, I think it was in Our State magazine, Robbie, there was a profile of you in the sanctuary, and one thing that stood out to me, you mentioned the Outer Banks are ever-changing.

Yes.

And which is true by nature of barrier islands.

And how do you strike that balance? Because when I think of conservation, I think of trying to keep nature the same, right? But the area that we live in and the area that our guests visit, they're constantly changing.

How do you strike that balance between that natural change that's occurring and the conservation that you're doing there? Yeah.

That's a terrific question because this was part of my personal growth.

So like when I came to the Outer Banks to take this job, in my mind, my job was to save the marshes, right? The marshes are washing away rapidly with sea level rise.

The edges of the marshes are eroding faster.

And all the animals and plants that depend upon them, they're losing that function.

Well, because of the nature of these changing environments, in the future there will actually be more marsh in eastern North Carolina than there is now.

Because places like Alligator River are flooding.

So they're going to turn into marsh, right? The challenge is that because we have all these human structures in the way, we're losing marsh rapidly now before we get new marsh.

So all those plants and animals are going to go through this ecological pinch point where they don't have anywhere to be.

So my job is not actually to save those pieces of marsh, but it's to make sure they last long enough that the new marshes are there.

So instead of trying to conserve a Yosemite or a Yellowstone, a particular spot on the landscape, our job is actually to preserve the functions of as long as possible.

So that people can go and fish where their granddaddy, not exactly where their granddaddy fished, but they can have the same experience in the same type of environment.

So it's a different way of thinking about conservation, and I had to evolve with it just as all of us have to figure out how we live in these ever-changing landscapes.

If you think about it, the barrier islands during the last ice age, 15,000 years ago, were all the way out at the continental shelf.

150,000 years ago, they were most of the way to Rocky Mount, three hours of driving inland.

So these things have always moved.

And it's learning to accept the fact that we live in an ever-changing landscape and make our choices based upon knowing that it will change.

And so thinking about our timelines is really important.

And I know we've had, especially post-COVID, a lot of conversations about the preservation of the Outer Banks and why that's important in terms of a lot of our guests come year after year, generation after generation.

So it is important.

Now's the time to really think about how do we protect and preserve them.