SELC Attorney Named 2004 NC Conservationist of the Year
Derb Carter accepts award for work with NC's waters and wetlands
Chapel Hill - Longtime environmental advocate, Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Derb S. Carter, Jr. was named North Carolina’s 2004 Conservationist of the Year by the NC Wildlife Federation for his longtime commitment to North Carolina’s waters, wetlands and wildlife. Most recently, Carter has served as a lead attorney successfully representing the environmental interests in litigation against against the Navy and their Outlying Landing Field proposal in northeastern North Carolina. Judge Terrence Boyle forbade the Navy from continuing with landing field plans due to their violation of environmental law brought to light by Carter and others.
Carter has worked as a Senior Attorney with SELC since 1989. As head of its Coastal and Wetlands Project, Carter headed a suit against the EPA, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the Weyerhaeuser Corporation that resulted in a settlement that not only protected the East Dismal Swamp in eastern North Carolina, but set precedent for saving many southern wetlands from ditching, draining and conversion. He litigated for the authority of North Carolina’s Environmental Management Commission to protect its own wetlands in the face of increasing gaps in federal protection and won in the Court of Appeals.
And in his most recent involvement in the high-profile suit against the Navy’s OLF proposal, Carter has brought widespread attention to the area’s natural beauty and ecological significance along with the importance of environmental responsibility by the federal government. Carter has also fought for North Carolina’s coast in courtrooms and communities as well as the unique and rare species associated with them.
Driven by a love of wildlife and nature, Fayetteville-born Carter received his undergraduate degree in biology from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. After law school and a job with the U.S. Department of the Interior, Carter came back to North Carolina in 1982 to open the National Wildlife Federation’s Carolina Wetlands office in Raleigh. He established and served as the first director of the National Wildlife Federation’s Southeastern Natural Resources Center in Raleigh until 1987. During his tenure Carter halted the conversion of wetlands into agricultural lands and pine plantations, helped communities get involved in conservation and preservation, and helped establish wildlife havens such as the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge and the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.
Edward Nickens' introduction of Derb Carter at the NC Wildlife Federation Governor's Award Banquet
"Derb Carter doesn't look like the bulldog chained to the front porch, daring the intruder to take one more step. But for so many critical conservation issues, Derb Carter and the Southern Environmental Law Center are our last, best options. When negotiations with developers have failed, when public outcry is ignored, when elected officials elect to turn a deaf ear to their duty to protect North Carolina's natural resources and the conservation community has no choice but to go to court, we turn to Derb Carter. He knows the law like he knows a summer tanager's call. He knows that he is involved when the going gets really, really tough. There is not a single North Carolinian who loves wildlife or wild places who does not owe him a debt of gratitude.
Derb is the senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center in Chapel Hill. Name a major conservation issue over the last 20 years, and you've named a fight Carter and SELC have fought. He led the legal battles to successfully challenge proposals to drain tens of thousands of acres of coastal wetlands in the mid-1980s. That fight led to the acquisition of more than a quarter-million acres of wetlands - and the establishment of the Alligator and Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuges.
He represented the National Wildlife Federation and the North Carolina Wildlife Federation challenging the ditching of wetlands for development. That led to new federal rules.
He represented the Federation and other groups to challenge destruction of the East Dismal Swamp, oil drilling off the Outer Banks, development in Buxton Woods, and weakening of rare species protections.
And over the last year, Derb Carter has been the field commander for the effort to halt the construction of the Navy's Outlying Landing Field on top of eastern North Carolina's most precious wildlands. He is the chief strategist for a team that has included public and private sector attorneys, two counties, and squadron of 30 volunteer law students who pored over 200,000 pages of Navy documents. We've had super news about the OLF, but this fight - perhaps the most critical of a generation for eastern North Carolina - is not over. And his two decades of commitment to conservation assure us that Derb Carter will be in the fight till what we hope is the ultimately triumphant end.
For 20 years, when all else has failed, Derb Carter and the Southern Environmental Law Center have not. For all these reasons, Derb Carter is the North Carolina Conservationist of the Year.
