SCOTLAND NECK -- The Sylvan Heights Waterfowl Park will be closed the rest of the week as staff and volunteers repair aviaries and pens that collapsed under the weight of a foot or more of snow.
The park, an 18-acre zoo and breeding center for ducks, geese, cranes and other waterfowl about 85 miles northeast of Raleigh, probably lost several dozen birds, though workers had not been able to reach all of the damaged pens Tuesday, said Brent Lubbock, membership and development manager.
Lubbock said volunteers from the N.C. Zoo, Disney's Animal Kingdom Park in Florida and other zoos are coming to help with the rescue and cleanup.
"We house one of the largest collections of rare and endangered species of waterfowl, and people don't want this collection to disappear," he said.
Snow stuck to a layer of ice on netting and fences until they couldn't take the weight any longer, particularly in the breeding center, which produces birds for zoos and collectors.
Lubbock said the damage is worse than what the center sustained during Hurricane Floyd in 1999.
Many of the volunteers who are coming to help were trained at the center and know how to approach and handle birds that might be trapped or injured.
"With birds, you really have to know the right way to hold them," Lubbock said. "You don't want to spook them."
The waterfowl center opened in late 2006 as an outgrowth of the breeding center that Brent Lubbock's father, Mike, started in the 1980s in Sylvan Heights, a town in the mountains of North Carolina. After a partner in the business died, friends who lived in Scotland Neck suggested Lubbock move it east.
