Carolina women protect the plants and animals of our Southern wetlands
As the days finally warm and lengthen, glimpses of spring are all around us.
On a walk through the neighborhood, you may come across the bright yellow petals of the trout lily, which blooms early each spring so it can soak up direct sunlight before leaves return to the trees. Each morning, you might start hearing the calls of red-winged blackbirds, marsh wrens, and other songbirds.
You could bump into a turtle by your local swamp, sunning herself in a patch of afternoon light. And if you live in the coastal plain of the Carolinas, you may even encounter the famous Venus flytrap poking out from a roadside ditch. In April and May, the flytrap will send up tall white flowers up to two feet above the ground, to prevent the peculiar plant from eating its own pollinators.
Common to each of these plants and animals? They all rely on wetlands to live.
A home for countless species
Our multifaceted wetlands look vastly different across the South and have many roles – from slowing and absorbing flooding, to cleaning our water, to nurturing the fish and shellfish that make possible our seafood industry. They also provide habitat to a countless number of our non-human neighbors – the plants and animals that give us daily wonder, delight, and connection to the places we call home.
Despite the immense benefits of wetlands, the U.S. Supreme Court dramatically limited their federal protections in 2023, leaving half of our nation’s wetlands vulnerable to pollution and destruction. In North Carolina, legislators have embraced this decision, removing state-level protections – and in Tennessee, lawmakers are currently considering a similarly destructive bill.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration recently signaled its intent to narrow federal wetlands protections even further than the Supreme Court did in its 2023 Sackett decision.
But in the aftermath of these devastating decisions, Southerners are taking action, stepping up to defend wetlands and the flora and fauna that depend on them.
“It’s our flytrap”
“First of all, almost everybody in this world knows about flytraps,” says Julie Moore. “But they think they’re from the Amazon or the Philippines. They don’t realize they’re from a small area in North and South Carolina.”
Moore says it’s this sense of connection and local pride that pushes people to protect the flytrap, which only grows in the wild in the Carolinas.
“It’s like, ‘It’s our flytrap. It’s here. It’s right in our backyards.’ So that’s part of the bait.”
A retired biologist, at 77, Moore heads the Venus Flytrap Champions, a network of Carolinians dedicated to the plant’s preservation.
Much of the group’s work takes place in Boiling Spring Lakes, a North Carolina town which Moore says was built on a “giant wetland” in the 1950s – prior to the passage of the Clean Water Act that would later protect wetlands from destruction.
Flytraps have historically thrived in the longleaf pine forests of North Carolina’s coastal plain. Wet for part of the year and dry for another part, these forests create perfect conditions for fires that prune overhead vegetation and allow light to reach the flytrap.
After the town’s development, Moore says, “the flytraps migrated to the edges,” looking for water and sunshine. That’s why, she explains, you can often find the carnivorous plant today along roadside ditches. Moore and her group have moved over 1,500 flytraps, replanting them in safer environments where they can thrive.
On trips to Boiling Spring Lakes, Moore describes how the flytrap captures the imagination of people she meets.
Once, staying overnight at a local motel, she remembers, “The woman who runs it got so fascinated by flytraps. She didn’t know much about them, and now she’s one of our biggest volunteers and promoters. When people have found flytraps and can’t get a hold of me, they know Stephanie at the motel.”
The network Moore has developed over the past few years has proven more important than ever in the wake of repealed wetlands protections that have spurred development in the coastal plain, putting people, wildlife, and plants like the flytrap at risk.
Her ethos as a conservationist?
“I believe and work on issues where individuals can make a difference,” says Moore, adding, “We need to find ways where everybody who wants to do something can help.”
The tiny traveling bog turtle
When asked her favorite species that she helps protect at the Amphibian and Reptile Conservancy, Kat Diersen names North America’s smallest turtle.
“They top out at four inches,” says Diersen. “When they’re born you can sit them on a quarter.”
That little turtle – the bog turtle – lives in a unique kind of wetland called a mountain bog. Unlike a heavily forested swamp, Diersen describes mountain bogs as open, sunny, and airy: “They always smell like it just rained.”
Bog turtles typically remain in the one or two-acre mountain bog where they were born for their whole lives. In a strange turn, though, Diersen says that the tiny turtle will in rare circumstances show up miles from home – as in, on the other side of a mountain. “They do very occasionally go on these epic journeys,” she marvels.
If you’re thinking that this sunny wetland sounds similar to the ones where carnivorous plants thrive, you’re right. The flytrap doesn’t extend to western North Carolina, where Diersen lives, but plenty of others do:
“People think of pitcher plants and sundews as coastal species. But we have mountain carnivorous plants up here.”
And bog turtles are not the only “herp” – the colloquial catchall term for amphibian and reptile species – that rely on both wetlands and the corridors that connect them.
“If you’re a frog, you live in a wetland. If you’re a salamander, you live in a wetland,” Diersen explains. “Most herp species [and] almost all amphibians cannot persist without wetlands.”
As the director of private lands and policy at ARC, Diersen understands the importance of working with private landowners to conserve species. For instance, there are only about 500 acres of mountain bogs left in the South, most on private land – making landowners essential to their preservation and the preservation of species like the bog turtle.
Part of that work can look like farmers strategically grazing their cattle at certain times of year to eat back the brush – and, of course, not draining the mountain bogs that exist on their land.
Diersen says, much of the voluntary partnerships and proactive conservation ARC does are possible because of strong wetlands protections.
“We get to be that side of it,” she says, “because the regulatory protections were the other side of it. It truly is existential.”
Protecting our wetlands together
Like Moore and Diersen, we can play a part in protecting wetlands and the plants and creatures who rely on them. If you live in North Carolina, where legislators have removed state-level protections, you can write to your representatives today and let them know why wetlands are so important to your community.
As spring arrives at last, many of us will be spending even more time outside in the places we love. When you do, see if you spot a flytrap, a turtle, dragonfly, butterfly, songbird, or knobby-kneed cypress tree.
Like countless species – and like all of us – they need wetlands in order to thrive.
