Currituck National Wildlife Refuge, located on the northern end of North Carolina

North Carolina

North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...

's Outer Banks

Outer Banks

The Outer Banks is a 200-mile long string of narrow barrier islands off the coast of North Carolina, beginning in the southeastern corner of Virginia Beach on the east coast of the United States....

, was established in 1984 to preserve and protect the coastal barrier island

Barrier island

Barrier islands, a coastal landform and a type of barrier system, are relatively narrow strips of sand that parallel the mainland coast. They usually occur in chains, consisting of anything from a few islands to more than a dozen...

 ecosystem. Refuge lands are managed to provide wintering habitat for waterfowl

Waterfowl

Waterfowl are certain wildfowl of the order Anseriformes, especially members of the family Anatidae, which includes ducks, geese, and swans....

 and to protect endangered species

Endangered species

An endangered species is a population of organisms which is at risk of becoming extinct because it is either few in numbers, or threatened by changing environmental or predation parameters...

 such as piping plover

Piping Plover

The Piping Plover is a small sand-colored, sparrow-sized shorebird that nests and feeds along coastal sand and gravel beaches in North America. The adult has yellow-orange legs, a black band across the forehead from eye to eye, and a black ring around the neck...

, sea turtle

Sea turtle

Sea turtles are marine reptiles that inhabit all of the world's oceans except the Arctic.-Distribution:...

s, and sea beach amaranth.

Habitat types common to most barrier islands are found on the refuge. Moving westward from the Atlantic Ocean

Atlantic Ocean

The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...

 to Currituck Sound

Currituck Sound

Currituck Sound is a protected inlet of the Atlantic Ocean in northeastern part of North Carolina. Thirty miles N-S and 3–8 miles wide, this shallow, island-filled sound is separated from the ocean by Bodie Island, part of the Outer Banks...

, these habitats include sandy beaches, grassy dunes, interdunal wetland

Interdunal wetland

An interdunal wetland or interdunal pond is a water-filled depression between coastal sand dunes. It may be formed either by wind erosion or by dunal encroachment on an existing wetland...

s (flats), maritime forests and shrub thickets. Currituck Sound's shoreline is made up of brackish water marsh

Marsh

In geography, a marsh, or morass, is a type of wetland that is subject to frequent or continuous flood. Typically the water is shallow and features grasses, rushes, reeds, typhas, sedges, other herbaceous plants, and moss....

es and occasionally, mud flats that have been exposed by wind tides. A few forested islands also exist on the refuge. Monkey Island, a noted bird rookery

Rookery

A rookery is a colony of breeding animals, generally birds. A rook is a Northern European and Central Asian member of the crow family, which nest in prominent colonies at the tops of trees. The term is applied to the nesting place of birds, such as crows and rooks, the source of the term...

, provides nesting habitat to several species of wading birds. Vegetation within these diverse habitat types include various types of beach grass

Grass

Grasses, or more technically graminoids, are monocotyledonous, usually herbaceous plants with narrow leaves growing from the base. They include the "true grasses", of the Poaceae family, as well as the sedges and the rushes . The true grasses include cereals, bamboo and the grasses of lawns ...

es, live oak, loblolly pine, wax myrtle

Myrica cerifera

Myrica cerifera is a small tree or large shrub native to North America. Its common names include Wax myrtle, Bayberry, Candleberry, Bayberry tree, and Tallow shrub...

, cattails, sedge

Cyperaceae

Cyperaceae are a family of monocotyledonous graminoid flowering plants known as sedges, which superficially resemble grasses or rushes. The family is large, with some 5,500 species described in about 109 genera. These species are widely distributed, with the centers of diversity for the group...

s and rush

Juncaceae

Juncaceae, the rush family, are a monocotyledonous family of flowering plants. There are eight genera and about 400 species. Members of the Juncaceae are slow-growing, rhizomatous, herbaceous plants, and they may superficially resemble grasses. They often grow on infertile soils in a wide range...

es, black needlerush (Juncus

Juncus

Juncus is a genus in the plant family Juncaceae. It consists of some 200 to 300 or more species of grassy plants commonly called rushes...

 roemerianus) and giant cordgrass (Spartina cynosuroides).

Various types of wading birds, shorebirds, waterfowl, raptors, mammals (including feral horse

Horse

The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...

s), reptiles, and amphibians common to the eastern United States, are found on the refuge. The endangered Piping Plover

Piping Plover

The Piping Plover is a small sand-colored, sparrow-sized shorebird that nests and feeds along coastal sand and gravel beaches in North America. The adult has yellow-orange legs, a black band across the forehead from eye to eye, and a black ring around the neck...

 and loggerhead sea turtle

Loggerhead sea turtle

The loggerhead sea turtle , or loggerhead, is an oceanic turtle distributed throughout the world. It is a marine reptile, belonging to the family Cheloniidae. The average loggerhead measures around long when fully grown, although larger specimens of up to have been discovered...

 sometimes nest on refuge beaches and dunes.

The refuge has a surface area of 8,313.64 acre

Acre

The acre is a unit of area in a number of different systems, including the imperial and U.S. customary systems. The most commonly used acres today are the international acre and, in the United States, the survey acre. The most common use of the acre is to measure tracts of land.The acre is related...

s (33.64 km² or 3,364.41 ha

Hectare

The hectare is a metric unit of area defined as 10,000 square metres , and primarily used in the measurement of land. In 1795, when the metric system was introduced, the are was defined as being 100 square metres and the hectare was thus 100 ares or 1/100 km2...

).