Saturday, June 16, 2007



Clay Ware, forester at the Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge


Excerpt from "In Search of the Elusive White Wicky"


As we stepped out of forester Clay Ware’s truck, biting yellow flies swarmed us. I sprayed my neck and arms with Deep Woods Off; it made me smelly and sticky. Clay went DEETless. He must have known the flies would disappear when we reached the pocosin . . .

“During prescribed burns, we run fire down into the stream heads,” he said. “You see how thick this is now. If we didn’t burn, the white wicky would get choked out by all the holly and red bay. But if you burn to set the other plants back, white wicky will keep on sprouting. . . . White wicky requires fire . . . It’s what enables this endangered plant to survive” . . .

“Here’s the white wicky--all of this right here,” Clay said, stooping. It was almost an undramatic moment. I had expected, I don’t know, a billboard or something to announce it . . . Then realized I was standing next to the three-foot tall, slender woody stem of one of the more endangered plants on the planet.

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