. Coast watch. Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology. Outside the forest, Brooks spends most of his time tracking turtles. In 1981, naturalists from the Wildlife Resources Commis- sion and the Heritage Program discovered that Bald Head hosted the state's largest population of nesting logger- head turtles. They soon realized, however, that 90 percent of the eggs were eaten by foxes and raccoons. To remedy the problem, naturalists Debbie Grouse and Joe Newman founded the sea turtle conservation project. They devised a wire screen to protect the nests and b
. Coast watch. Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology. Outside the forest, Brooks spends most of his time tracking turtles. In 1981, naturalists from the Wildlife Resources Commis- sion and the Heritage Program discovered that Bald Head hosted the state's largest population of nesting logger- head turtles. They soon realized, however, that 90 percent of the eggs were eaten by foxes and raccoons. To remedy the problem, naturalists Debbie Grouse and Joe Newman founded the sea turtle conservation project. They devised a wire screen to protect the nests and began monitoring them closely. Interns from the Nature Conservancy helped out in the summer, but by 1983 the project had become too big for the inland agency to supervise. In November, the Bald Head Island property owners' association passed a charter creating the the island's own non-profit conservancy And they employed a naturalist to keep watch over the loggerheads. Today 95 percent of the turtle eggs hatch. ^ f fl^lV/'*^^ I Like the beach and the forest, each ecosystem on Bald Head supports a unique collection of plants and animals. Together they seem to form an open-air natural history museum. Maintaining the museum takes effort. The developers must build. Buyers and renters want peace and tranquility. Naturalists need to preserve the in- tegrity of the island. Harmony is sometimes elusive. During the first stage of building in the 1970s, developers cut down large portions of the maritime forest, weakening the canopy says Cindy Meekins, board member of the Bald Head Conservancy Inc. and former island naturalist. Their mistake was evident, Meekins says, when Hurricane Diana swept through Bald Head in 1984 and damaged 70 percent of the forest and most of the golf course fairways. "It took them months to fix that," Meekins adds. The current developers, Bald Head Island Limited, took a different approach. After working with conservationists, the group devised a b
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