An American red wolf at Fossil Rim Wildlife Center.
Garrett Gosdin/Fossil Rim Wildlife Center
The wolf is already moving when Jason Ahistus opens the gate, a gray-orange shadow slipping silently through the brush on long, loping legs. Ahistus steps inside easily, shutting the gate behind him. He moves through the enclosure, checking the den, changing the water dish: furtive movements orbit him, the fact of his presence in the enclosure repelling its occupant as surely as one magnet pushes away another.
“They’re always this shy,” Ahistus says as he comes back toward the fence. Thirty feet behind him, a solemn canine face appears from behind a tree, ears pricked, then withdraws. “Especially the more people there are. Sometimes they stand and look at you as you’re walking up, but you come into the enclosure and they just vanish.”
Trekking out to my research sites near North Carolina s Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, I slog through knee-deep water on a section of trail that is completely submerged.Permanent flooding has become commonplace on this low-lying peninsula, nestled behind North Carolina s Outer Banks. The trees growing in the water are small and stunted. Many are dead.
Throughout coastal North Carolina, evidence of forest die-off is everywhere. Nearly every roadside ditch I pass while driving around the region is lined with dead or dying trees.
As an ecologist studying wetland response to sea level rise, I know this flooding is evidence that climate change is altering landscapes along the Atlantic coast. It s emblematic of environmental changes that also threaten wildlife, ecosystems, and local farms and forestry businesses.
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Trekking out to my research sites near North Carolina’s Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, I slog through knee-deep water on a section of trail that is completely submerged. Permanent flooding has become commonplace on this low-lying peninsula, nestled behind North Carolina’s Outer Banks. The trees growing in the water are small and stunted. Many are dead.
Throughout coastal North Carolina, evidence of forest die-off is everywhere. Nearly every roadside ditch I pass while driving around the region is lined with dead or dying trees.
As an ecologist studying wetland response to sea level rise, I know this flooding is evidence that climate change is altering landscapes along the Atlantic coast. It’s emblematic of environmental changes that also threaten wildlife, ecosystems and local farms and forestry businesses.
Sea Level Rise Is Creating Ghost Forests That are Visible From Space Sunday April 25, 2021
Ghost forest panorama in coastal North Carolina. Photo: Emily Ury, CC BY-ND
Trekking out to my research sites near North Carolina’s Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, I slog through knee-deep water on a section of trail that is completely submerged. Permanent flooding has become commonplace on this low-lying peninsula, nestled behind North Carolina’s Outer Banks. The trees growing in the water are small and stunted. Many are dead.
Throughout coastal North Carolina, evidence of forest die-off is everywhere. Nearly every roadside ditch I pass while driving around the region is lined with dead or dying trees.