THE CAROLINA BAYS

Ecological Significance and Biodiversity


 
The bays are especially rich in biodiversity, including some rare and/or endangered species. Species that thrive in the bays' habitats include birds, such as wood storks, herons, egrets, and other migratory waterfowl, mammals such as deer, black bears, raccoons, skunks, and opossums. Other residents include dragonflies, green anoles and green tree frogs.

The bays contain trees such as black gum, bald cypress, pond cypress, sweet bay, loblolly bay, red bay, sweet gum, maple, magnolia, pond pine, and shrubs such as fetterbush, clethra, sumac, button bush, zenobia, and gallberry. Plants common in Carolina bays are water lilies, sedges and various grasses. Several carnivorous plants inhabit Carolina bays, including bladderwort, butterwort, pitcher plant, and sundew.

Some of the bays have been greatly modified within human history, under pressure from farming, highway building, housing developments and golf courses. Carvers Bay, a large one in Georgetown County was used as a bombing practice range during World War II. It has been drained and is mostly used for tree farming today. Others are used for vegetable or field crops with drainage.

In South Carolina, Woods Bay, on the Sumter-Clarendon County line near Turbeville has been designated a state park to preserve as much as possible in its natural state. Also in Clarendon County (near Manning) another bay, Bennett's Bay is a Heritage Preserve.

Another bay in Bamberg County, South Carolina is owned by the South Carolina Native Plant Society which has been developing a 52 acre preserve called the Lisa Matthews Memorial Bay, which is trying to preserve and increase the federally endangered wildflower Oxypolis canbyi (Canby's Dropwort) in the bay.

The uplands area surrounding the bay is being restored from a loblolly pine plantation to the original longleaf pine. Included in the longleaf restoration is the restoration of wiregrass (Aristida beyrichiana) as a key understory plant. Its flammability aids in periodic burning, which is necessary for Canby's Dropwort and many of the other species unique to the environment.