5 Disappearing Things North Carolinians Won’t Be Able to Enjoy Much Longer

How many tobacco barns are left in North Carolina?

“Not as many as there were yesterday,” the state’s historic preservation office says.

Familiar sights like that are slipping away.

Here are the disappearing things North Carolinians won’t be able to enjoy much longer.

1. Hatteras Beach Houses

Beach houses on Cape Hatteras National Seashore keep collapsing, and the National Park Service tracks each one.

The list shows 32 privately owned houses that have collapsed on Seashore beaches since 2020, as of its Aug. 19, 2026 update.

The first was an unoccupied house in Rodanthe that went down overnight on May 29, 2020.

This year, four unoccupied houses collapsed in Buxton on Feb. 1 and Feb. 2, and another went down there on June 2.

Walk the beach near Rodanthe and you may find stretches closed around other threatened houses.

Owners’ own cleanup hasn’t always restored the beach, so Park Service crews have added cleanup work and sought to recover the costs.

The agency bought two threatened oceanfront properties in Rodanthe in 2023.

2. Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula Forests

Ghost forests are spreading across the Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula, and a Duke-led team has measured how far.

The team mined 35 years of satellite images covering 245,000 acres of that region.

Between 1985 and 2019, ghost forests took over 11% of that area’s tree cover.

Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge lost more than 46,950 acres of forest, or a quarter of its 1985 tree cover.

The study’s most noticeable die-off came in 2012.

Drive through the refuge and you’re crossing land that, in many places, sits less than two feet above sea level.

3. Southern Flounder

The latest stock assessment update for the South Atlantic stock, which North Carolina shares with neighboring states, found it overfished and likely experiencing overfishing.

That 2024 update used data through 2022.

It put the 2022 spawning stock at 1,019 metric tons, about a quarter of the 4,092-ton threshold.

The state didn’t open a recreational flounder season at all in 2024, to preserve the resource.

This year’s limit was one fish per person per day, with a 15-inch minimum, so check the Division of Marine Fisheries page before you load the boat.

The state’s management plan also keeps a goal of cutting southern flounder harvest by 72%.

4. Tobacco Barns

How many tobacco barns are there? "Not as many as there were yesterday," the State Historic Preservation Office answers.

Tobacco has been important to the state for three centuries.

Abandoned flue-cure barns are disappearing.

Modern bulk curing systems made the traditional flue-cure barn obsolete in the last quarter of the 20th century.

There generally are no grants or other financial assistance for private restorations.

If you spot an abandoned barn on a back road, the office's Celebrate Tobacco Barns project has photographs and resources about them.

5. Striped Bass

Striped bass in the Albemarle-Roanoke system kept declining in the state's 2022 assessment update.

That update also found the stock still overfished, with fishing outpacing what the fish can sustain.

If you fish the Neuse or the Tar-Pamlico, the annual review calls the striped bass stocks in both rivers currently not sustainable.

River herring along the Atlantic coast also remain depleted, according to the 2024 coast-wide stock assessment.

The next comprehensive review of the striped bass plan is set to begin in 2027.

The Eno Festival's Missing July

Durham's Festival for the Eno, a tradition for nearly five decades, skipped its July festival in 2026.

Organizers planned a benefit concert and community celebration in downtown Durham for Sept. 12, marking 60 years of conservation work.

West Point on the Eno, the festival's longtime home, was scheduled to close for construction in early summer.

They also cited the increasingly extreme heat and severe weather of July.

The plan is to return to a festival format in spring 2027.

Think of it as a pause, and if July on the river was your tradition, plan on spring.

Red Wolves Buck the Trend

Red wolves are the exception on this list.

As of August 2026, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Red Wolf Recovery Program estimates 22 to 23 adult and subadult wolves in the wild, plus 14 to 15 pups.

ABC11 reported in July that four litters of pups were born in the wild this year.