Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge Restoration Project

Five years after the Allen Road Fire, the U.S. government established the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in the North Carolina cost to restore the ditched, dried, and burned peatlands and convert them back into carbon sinks. Refuge managers are working in a 19-year effort to construct an equally ingenious hydrologic system to bring water back into the swamp on a hill at levels mimicking the natural system. They installed flashboard risers in the existing canals to allow for better water level management. Restoration continues today while additional funding still needed to restore more than 10,000 acres of remaining peatland.