If you live on Hatteras Island, you live in one of the most dynamic natural environments on the U.S. East Coast. And you also live in a very economically challenged community.
Businesses in this tourism and fishing economy are seemingly constantly under siege by Mother Nature, federal regulators, and outside environmental groups that want to protect our natural resources at any cost to our livelihoods.
If you read the comments on this blog and other online forums, you might come away thinking that these are extremely polarizing issues ? long bridge vs. short bridge, dredging inlets, nourishing beaches, protecting nesting shorebirds and turtles.
However, maybe this isn?t so, says Dr. Christine Avenarius, associate professor of anthropology at East Carolina University.
Avenarius and five ECU graduate students spent last summer interviewing 208 Dare County residents on their perceptions of the relationship between environmental change and the regional economy. The study was part of the university?s project to restart the dialogue about coastal management policies.
?Dare County residents? evaluations of their natural and economic environment,? she says, ?are less polarized than predicted. It?s not a matter of promoters of economic growth against protectors of nature.?
In hour-long interviews, the professor and her students found that residents understand how economics and the environment affect each other and accept that their natural surroundings change constantly and can?t entirely be controlled.
They also found that many have middle-of-the road attitudes and that very few of them realize how many others share the same opinion that they do.
?On Hatteras Island, in particular,? she says ?local residents have a high level of agreement about infrastructure projects and support measures to maintain a healthy tourist economy.?
Avenarius presented the findings from her work at a briefing for the media and the Hatteras islanders who participated in the study at the Avon Firehouse earlier this week.
The study, she said, was funded by the non-partisan Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation of Winston-Salem, N.C.
The team sought the honest opinions of everyday Dare citizens and not political decision makers, elected officials, or members of the media.
The 208 participants came from all areas of the county and were broken into three groups ?Region 1 from Manteo to East Lake, Region 2 from Hatteras Island, and Region 3 from Nags Head to Duck. The location distribution of the participants closely matches the population distribution of the county.
Forty-four percent of the participants were women, and 56 percent were men. Twenty-seven percent were born and raised in Dare County and the rest were broken down by how much of their lives had been spent in the county. They came from all age ranges with the largest representation in the 40 to 49, 50 to 50, and 60-plus ranges.
The interviews consisted of open-ended questions to elicit honesty, sentence completion, ranking tasks, and sorting tasks to determine how the participants ranked allocation tax of tax money to a set of projects.
Regardless of background, residents recognize how nature and economic stability are intertwined locally and that and uncertainty in the environmental future breeds and uncertainty about the economic future.
?Many are willing,? she says, ?to support measures to ensure economic stability before simply letting nature take its course.
?But despite the widespread sentiment that ?humans are part of nature too,? there is also a keen awareness that in Dare County ?nature is our business.??
Here are other results of interest:
- Places we love on Hatteras Island. Eight-five percent mentioned Cape Point, 60 percent mentioned Buxton Woods Maritime Forest, and 45 percent like boating around sandbars.
- Eyesores on Hatteras Island. Sixty-five percent mentioned the unsightly water park in Rodanthe and 75 percent said Wings stores.
- On sea-level rise. Only 20 percent of the participants used the word ?sea-level? rise to describe their understanding of the environmental changes in Dare County. The majority used the word ?erosion? when communicating their observations.
- Oregon Inlet. Nearly 90 percent are for dredging. And even folks who are against beach nourishment or for letting nature take its course think the fisheries should be sustained.
- Long bridge vs. short bridge. Participants from Hatteras Island were 100 percent in favor of N.C. Department of Transportation?s plan to replace the Bonner Bridge with a parallel, short bridge. Fewer favor the bridge in other parts of the county.
- Beach Nourishment. Forty percent of participants oppose beach nourishment as a means of dealing with erosion. The sixty percent who support nourishment can be further broken down to two-thirds who support it with reservations and a third who support it without reservations.
- The supporters who favor beach nourishment with reservations are mostly residents between 40 and 60 who have spent 25 to 50 percent of their lives in Dare County.
- Business owners are more likely than employees, retirees, and unemployed residents to support beach nourishment without reservation.
- Younger and older residents are more likely to be against beach nourishment, especially if they grew up in Dare County. Also, those who oppose beach nourishment are more likely to live on Roanoke or Hatteras islands. Avenarius also notes that during the time of the survey from May until November last year, Hatteras islanders were more focused on the bridge replacement than nourishment.
- On Hatteras Island, people are more aware of natural processes and more likely to feel that humans are part of nature also.
- Hatteras Island also had stronger voices of the folks who were born and raised here.
- The southern villages on Hatteras Island are more cohesive than Avon and the tri-villages.
- Access to Pea Island is very important to residents who live north of the Bonner Bridge.
- Sixty-seven percent of the participants support wind turbines.
- Finally, Avenarius notes that among all study participants there is a clear divide. Business owners and those who have lived here between 25 and 50 percent of their lives want economic issues to trump environmental ones. Most others see environmental protection as a means for sustaining the economy in the long run.
What does Avenarius take away from the study?
Here is how she summarizes the sentiments of those who were interviewed:
?Let nature take its course, but let me make money first.?
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
To read an interview with Dr. Christine Avenarius in Milepost magazine, go to
http://issuu.com/outerbanksmilepost/docs/3.1_milepost-lowres. It?s on Page 36 of the current issue.
