Island Retreat

WHEN ROBBIE FEARN MOVED from the mountains of Alabama to the North Carolina coast in 2013, he didn’t realize that climate change would consume his career. The former wildlife-hospital director had been tapped to oversee the Donal C. O’Brien Jr. Sanctuary and Audubon Center at Pine Island, situated at the north end of the 120-mile-long string of barrier islands called the Outer Banks. A wild haven tucked among timeshares, the 2,600-acre property sits at the heart of one of the largest waterfowl wintering sites on the Eastern Seaboard.

But as Fearn quickly learned, the realities of climate change are unavoidable at Pine Island. Founded in 1910 as a duck-hunting club and managed by Audubon North Carolina since 2010, the property is pressed between the Atlantic Ocean and the Currituck Sound, a shallow estuary that separates the northern Outer Banks from the mainland. Every year, both bodies of water creep a little higher. Downpours and storms, intensified by climate change and