On The Wings of Change

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This series was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center and the Science Journalism course at Duke Marine Lab.

Since before he was old enough to drive a car, Chris Yeomans has been duck hunting Down East in North Carolina. He’s now 60, with white hair and a beard, like a tall, skinny Santa Claus. Even with a bad knee, he makes the effort to go out on his camouflaged boat each duck season. 

“It’s not just going out and killing ducks,” he said. “It’s the whole process of making everything right. … You know, camouflaging, going where you’re supposed to go, doing your scouting.”

Like Yeomans, many people Down East value ducks, both culturally and economically. At the same time, sea level rise is threatening this important part of their lives.

“There’s little marsh islands that used to exist that we used to hunt around,” Yeomans said. “They’re gone. … They’ve washed away.”

By 2100, sea level in Beaufort is estimated to be 4.3 feet higher than it was in 1992. Coastal North Carolina has already experienced approximately 11 inches of sea level rise since 1950. Higher waters drown marshes that serve as important stopovers and feeding grounds for birds during their migration along the Atlantic Flyway, which is used by more than 500 bird species. This flyway runs through North Carolina and was discovered by scientists in the 1940s using banding data from migratory birds. (Birds are tracked via a numbered metal band around their leg.) Patterns arose that showed multiple bird species using similar flying routes in the sky. 

The rising seas don’t just flood people’s homes; they also flood habitats that ducks rely on, such as marshes. 

Rising Waters, Building Community

While Yeomans said part of the appeal of duck hunting is love for the birds themselves, he praised the community that is created from hunting. Even though hunting has become more difficult as he’s aged, he still makes an effort to share what he hunts with those who are too old to go out themselves. 

He and a hunting buddy provided more than 50 ducks for the “Taste of Core Sound” fundraiser at the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum in Harkers Island in February. The ducks were prepared like roast beef, easy to pull apart and covered in a delicious brown sauce with rutabaga. 

This fundraiser brought together community members and people from “off,” a term that describes someone who isn’t from Down East, to celebrate the rich history and culture of this place, a collection of rural communities that begins at the North River Bridge east of Beaufort and extends east to Cedar Island. 

Ten attendees sat at a table, each covered in a red gingham tablecloth and topped with an elaborate display of a duck decoy, seashells, nets, old shotgun shells, and rolls of cork. Napkins were folded neatly into fat glass cups. The decorations were fancy, but the atmosphere was casual and welcoming.

The profits from the fundraiser benefit the museum, and the attendees benefited from a menu of redhead ducks cooked with rutabaga, oysters on the half shell, light rolls, and more. Decoys were auctioned off to benefit either the carver or the museum, to ensure the continuity of this craft for years to come. 

For the decoy carvers, the art is passed down from father to son. Jason Michels and his son Clay whittle down sharp blocks of tupelo gum into smooth, curved ducks that they then brush with vibrant paints. 

While they do carve decoys for hunting if requested, Jason Michels said his contemporary style (which uses power tools as opposed to a hatchet) is fit “for a mantel.” His son got interested in the trade during a youth carving day for Boy Scouts at the local decoy guild. Jason hadn’t been carving decoys as often since he started a family, but his son’s fascination got him back into the art. 

Other artists contribute to the conservation of duck habitats through the Federal Duck Stamp contest. This contest brings together duck hunters, enthusiasts, and artists to create art that has the potential to become a stamp, a pass for duck hunting, and free entry into national wildlife refuges. The winning art is used on the new stamp for a year, and 98 percent of the proceeds goes toward habitat conservation. Duck hunters contribute millions of dollars annually to habitat restoration across the United States by purchasing items like the Federal Duck Stamp. This restoration is focused on wetlands that waterfowl depend on, like marshes. 

Scientists are also working hard to preserve duck habitats. Yeoman’s friend Joel Fodrie has been researching seagrasses and salt marshes at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which includes planting seagrass beds in the ocean to help restore vital habitats for fish and other animals to combat damage done by sea level rise and human development. 

These habitats contain food for the ducks, like grasses and wild rice, and serve as a place to rest during a long migration. When marshes are inundated with sea water, the plants can get buried and suffocated by sedimentation and high salinity. Down East, some places are flooded about a third of the year due to both storms and high tides (known as sunny day flooding).

Sea Level Rise and Bird Flu: A Perfect Storm

Sea level rise is only one of several environmental factors impacting ducks, said Chris Kent, the district wildlife biologist for 12 counties, including Carteret.

“I’m fearful for our bird populations,” he said. “There are not many bird populations across the world that are not seeing declines of some sort.” 

The National Audubon Society, a nonprofit dedicated to the conservation of birds, noted that migratory birds were of particular concern. In fact, 389 migratory bird species in North America are considered highly vulnerable due to climate impacts to their habitats, including drought and sea level rise. 

Avian flu has decimated bird populations since 2022 and is particularly bad for waterfowl like ducks. Ducks also can be carriers of the virus without becoming sick, passing the virus on to other birds, like poultry. 

“In these four years, the number of birds that my agency has picked up and sent off to the disease lab for testing and the number of mortality events that we’ve been contacted about has been very alarming,” Kent said.

Kent has been documenting avian flu deaths in North Carolina. He says avian flu had disappeared for several years before re-emerging in North Carolina. The avian virus first wreaked havoc in North Carolina in 2015 and then disappeared from the state until 2020. The virus popped up again in 2022, but in the last four years, in what Kent calls an “unprecedented” length of time, the avian flu has stuck around with consistent outbreaks. 

“You throw in a disease event like this, and it can really have serious impacts on [bird] populations,” he said. 

Kent said this year has been particularly hard for wood ducks. In one location, someone reported to Kent that 100 wood ducks died from avian flu. 

“When you see that death and destruction, sometimes it really beats you down hard,” he said. But Kent doesn’t let it get him down; instead, he uses these experiences as motivation to continue teaching people about North Carolina’s wildlife and what they can do to support the environment. “I just keep trying to educate people about what we can do to do better,” he said.

Shifting Species

Climate change also impacts the distribution of duck species. To migrate, they often need an external push, which may include cold weather or a lack of food. If this external push doesn’t happen, then ducks won’t migrate, and hunting won’t be very fruitful in the place they were supposed to go. 

Edward Farley, a manager of conservation programs for Ducks Unlimited, a nonprofit dedicated to the conservation of waterfowl and their habitats, said that migration patterns have been shifting due to climate change. “Every year they’re a little bit different,” he said. 

This has caused some disruptions for duck hunters in other parts of the U.S., like in Louisiana, where “they just aren’t seeing mallards like they used to,” Farley said.

“Some years in eastern North Carolina, waterfowl hunting is not very good, and often that’s because it’s a mild winter, and the waterfowl is up in Baltimore, Chesapeake Bay, or in Pennsylvania,” Kent said. “If it’s a mild winter, they don’t necessarily have to fly those extra hundreds of miles down to eastern North Carolina.” 

Yeomans also said he has been seeing certain species less and less over his years as a hunter. 

“In the early ’90s, we had what we call puddle ducks–a lot of wigeon, a lot of teal. They came in large numbers at the time, and for some reason, they don’t come down as often,” Yeomans said. 

Duck impoundments, which are habitats specifically maintained to attract ducks, north of Down East have stopped many ducks from coming farther south. But Yeomans, who was an elementary school principal and now coaches Down East’s middle school basketball team, hasn’t lost hope.  He said many of the kids who play basketball for him go duck hunting with their dads. “So it’s still alive,” he said. “You might say it’s being passed down.” 

When he was a boy, duck hunting was seen as a rite of passage. The act of hunting and beyond–the camouflage, the hunting sites, the camaraderie–is all still being passed down like a family heirloom. 

Some species of waterfowl are more resilient to changes in their habitat than others. For example, Audubon lists duck species like black-bellied whistling-ducks, redheads, and fulvous whistling-ducks as “stable” species. Yet their website indicates that sea level rise threatens their habitat. 

Audubon lists 389 vulnerable species, which vastly outnumbers the 215 species considered stable.

Kent remains optimistic despite uncertainty. He pours himself into his work at the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, whether it’s ducks suffering from avian flu or an alligator sunbathing in someone’s yard. He proudly calls himself a problem solver. 

“You either throw your hands up and give up, or you just put your head down and continue to work as hard as you can,” he said. “I refuse to give up.”

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Alyssa Klim is a visiting student at Duke from Allegheny College, where she is majoring in environmental science and minoring in English. She is also pursuing a masters degree in public policy and management at Carnegie Mellon University.