Ocracoke Island will hold first-ever Earth Day Festival April 19-21
Ocracoke’s pristine beaches, maritime nature trails, village gardens, glorious live oaks, and thriving wildlife inspire residents and visitors alike to appreciate and celebrate our beautiful island’s natural places. This year, to share the love of the island and the rest of the planet, the Ocracoke community is organizing the first annual Ocracoke Earth Day Weekend Celebration.
In collaboration with local and regional individuals and organizations, Ocracoke Alive staff and volunteers have planned a weekend of information and fun. “We want to strike a balance between celebrating the beauty around us, while also offering discussions about the threats to the coastal environment and learning about practical and sustainable solutions to these threats,” said Ocracoke Alive director David Tweedie.
The Earth Day Weekend’s Celebration’s keynote speaker is Reide Corbett from East Carolina University’s Coastal Studies Institute. As the Dean of Integrated Coastal Programs, Corbett leads an interdisciplinary team of faculty and staff from across ECU’s campuses that integrates the fields of engineering, maritime history, natural, and social sciences. Corbett will present “North Carolina’s Changing Coast: Sea level, Storms, and People” at 7 p.m. Saturday evening at the Ocracoke Community Center.
The Ocracoke Earth Day Weekend Celebration will begin on Friday, April 19th an afternoon tour of the Island Inn Commons. Weekend events offer many choices, indoors and out, for all ages including nature walks, history talks, gardening, nature crafts, live music, stargazing, a village litter pick-up, and many informative discussions and presentations about sustainability and solutions. The weekend ends with a community beach fire (with s’mores!) at Ocracoke’s lifeguard beach.
A schedule of events for the weekend-long festivities is listed below, and folks can also visit their website at https://www.ocracokealive.org/earthday.html for more information, and to obtain a printable schedule.
The festival is free and open to the public, and more information on the host organization Ocracoke Alive can be found at https://www.ocracokealive.org/.
