protection and conservation.
In April, Miller received the prestigious
2011 National Wetlands Award for Wetland
Community Leadership from the Environmental Law Institute, based in Washington,
D.C. The award honors Miller’s three
decades of dedication to wetlands protection. He previously received the Old
North State Award (2007) and the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Southern
Environmental Leadership Award (2000).
PHOTOS BY STEVE EXUM ’ 92
Restoring and fighting
As many nonprofit organizations have
withered during the economic downturn,
the federation has thrived, with 10,000
dues-paying members, a diverse portfolio
of funding sources, projects throughout
coastal North Carolina, and offices in Man-teo, Ocean and Wilmington. Much of its
money and energy goes toward keeping
coastal waters clean. The federation’s signature project is North River Farms, where
with multiple partners it has restored 2,200
acres of agricultural fields to wetlands in
the headwaters of estuaries near Cape
Lookout National Seashore. The project
will restore another 2,600 acres over the
next several years, Miller said, and the work
already has paid off in better water quality
and improved oyster reefs downstream.
Eric Pake Jr., who runs a land-clearing
and dredging business in Carteret County,
once helped bulldoze and ditch the same
land that the federation has been restoring
at North River Farms. Today, Pake and his
daughter Brittany, 19, a tugboat operator,
use their equipment and know-how to
help the federation rebuild wetlands and
oyster reefs. Pake has seen firsthand what
happens when land clearing goes too far.
“Runoff from farming ruined the
North River and killed the oysters,” Pake
said. “But Todd and Lexia [Weaver, the fed-
eration’s coastal scientist] used old surveys
to put the land back the way it was. It was
the right thing to do, and the proof is in
North River. The oysters are back like they
were in the 1950s and ’60s. You can find
oysters there now as big as your hand.”
Success stories like North River haven’t
come easy, and the degree of difficulty for
Miller and the federation has always been
high. Coastal real estate attracts power and
money the way tender skin attracts mos-
quitoes. With a staff of 19, including two
part-timers, and a bone-lean operating
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