Pocosins are home to a tremendous variety of wildlife for all or part of the year. Turkeys, deer, and a host of other mammals, birds, amphibians, and reptiles call the refuge home. And Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge has one of the most dense populations of American Black Bear reported anywhere. Lots of neotropical migratory birds, like this Prothonotary Warbler, migrate to the refuge each spring to nest in the forested pocosin wetlands. Many of the migratory bird species whose populations are declining in size depend on large, contiguous areas of forested wetlands like the ones found on the peatland refuges in eastern North Carolina.