Appendix 5
Reference Document 5-2
managers, supporting climate resilience efforts, increasing public access to recreation, promoting compatible land use near military installations, and fostering collaboration among various stakeholders. Sentinel Landscape designation leads to a myriad of benefits for local partners, including resources to hire a local Sentinel Landscape coordinator and priority consideration for certain federal funding opportunities. The Eastern North Carolina Sentinel Landscape, established in 2016, is one of the largest in the country. Encompassing more than 11 million acres and ranging across a 33-county region. The partnership aims to maintain and enhance working and natural lands, water resources, conservation, and military readiness in eastern North Carolina.
The South Atlantic Salt Marsh Initiative
Healthy and intact salt marsh ecosystems are widely recognized as important for shoreline stabilization, increasing coastal resilience to extreme weather events, and providing habitat for many coastal species. They also significantly contribute to local, state, and national economies as well as national defense. Beyond their ecological and commercial value, salt marshes are also iconic landscapes that are intertwined with cultural resources and history. Within the South Atlantic Region, salt marshes collectively form an extensive habitat totaling approximately 1 million acres along the coasts of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. The South Atlantic Salt Marsh Initiative (SASMI) is a regional effort and a voluntary, non-regulatory partnership that brings together leaders from the Southeast Regional Partnership for Planning and Sustainability (SERPPAS) and other local, state and federal partners, communities and nongovernmental organizations to determine the greatest threats to the salt marsh ecosystem and opportunities to ensure its survival. This coalition effort officially launched in May 2021, and since then SERPPAS and The Pew Charitable Trusts have brought together approximately 300 diverse partners across the region. The goal of the SASMI is to enhance the long-term abundance, health and resilience of the approximately 1 million acres of salt marshes within the South Atlantic states to ensure no overall loss of the benefits these wetlands provide to fish, wildlife and people. In order to achieve this goal, SASMI has rallied partners to develop the South Atlantic Salt Marsh Plan, which offers a voluntary and collaborative approach towards how partners can best work together to achieve the salt marsh goal. Coastal North Carolina supports approximately 222,000 acres of salt marsh (North Carolina Coastal Federation, 2024). Already a leader and actively working on salt marsh restoration efforts, staff from the NC Wildlife Resources Commission participated in and helped develop SASMI plan. In addition the North Carolina Coastal Federation is helping facilitate a state-wide implementation team and execute the North Carolina Salt Marsh Action Plan. This plan details a five-year strategy to protect, restore, and allow for the migration of salt marshes while minimizing the loss and degradation of their existing ecological services.
The Southeast Aquatic Resources Partnership (SARP)
The Southeast Aquatic Resources Partnership (SARP) is a regional collaboration of natural resource and science agencies, conservation organizations and private interests developed to strengthen the
2025 NC Wildlife Action Plan
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