South Carolina's Hammock Islands, Oases in the Salt Marsh
John W. (Billy) McCord, SC DNR
24 Aug 2007
Approximately 3500 small islands or hammocks are contained within the expansive estuaries of the South Carolina Coastal Zone. Prior to the fall of 2003, the ecology of such islands in South Carolina and elsewhere in the Southeast have been little studied. Several independent, but overlapping, grants from fall 2003 through to the present have sponsored ecological inventories of 130 hammock islands distributed along the South Carolina coast from Murrell's Inlet to southern Beaufort County. Studies were conducted using a meandering search or foraging methodology to produce relatively comprehensive inventories of vascular flora, vertebrate fauna and invertebrate fauna from selected taxa. Data produced by the studies have been largely qualitative because of the broad scope of natural resource assets that were studied. Studies have revealed a very high ecological diversity for hammock islands. Over 530 species of vascular plants have been recorded and several hundred archived plant specimens are awaiting identification. The following numbers of faunal species have been recorded to date: mammals - 21; birds - 161; reptiles - 23; amphibians - 11; fish - 9; butterflies - 60; dragonflies - 21; crayfish - 1. Hammocks are particularly valuable as stop-over sites for migratory land birds, breeding areas for Painted Bunting, resting and roosting sites for wading birds, and as "camp sites" for Northern River Otter. Development impacts on coastal mainlands, barrier islands, sea islands and some hammock islands has likely resulted in increased ecological value for undeveloped hammocks. However, many currently undeveloped hammocks are receiving much attention from coastal developers.