Conservancy Gets Assistance with Nags Head Woods

Dominion Volunteers Spend Day Working at Preserve

DURHAM — Oct. 29, 2009 — When you care for a 1000-plus acre preserve, volunteer help is crucial. Dominion volunteers recently spent a day at the Nags Head Woods Ecological Preserve in Dare County, helping with improvements.

Freshwater Pond at Nags Head Woods Preserve Much of the work centered on creation of a multi-use path at the preserve, which will provide access for people with disabilities and families with small children in strollers. This is an important project for both the Conservancy and Dominion, whose foundation has already contributed $100,000 to the path construction. In addition to clearing the area for the path, volunteers also built a new gate for the path entrance and helped in painting and cleaning up around the Yellow House located on old Nags Head Woods road.

Thirty-one Dominion employees from the Kitty Hawk and Elizabeth City offices participated in the work day. It is the third work day Dominion has conducted at the Nags Head Woods Preserve.

Nags Head Wood Ecological Preserve is open to the public from dawn until dusk every day of the week. It features a diversity of plant and animal life that is unusual to find on a barrier island. Towering oaks, hickories, and beech trees—some hundreds of years old—rise from the sand and create a canopy of trees more typical of the mountains of the eastern United States. Over 100 species of birds have been documented there. Fifteen species of amphibians and 28 species of reptiles have been documented as well. The freshwater ponds are inhabited by seven species of fish and many reptiles and amphibians in addition to a great diversity of floating aquatic plant life, including the rare water violet. An extensive marsh system bordering Roanoke Sound on the western side of the preserve supports a wealth of wildlife including river otter, egrets, herons, and many species of migratory waterfowl.

The Nature Conservancy is a leading conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters for nature and people. The Conservancy and its more than 1 million members have protected nearly 120 million acres worldwide. Visit The Nature Conservancy on the Web at www.nature.org.