The birds are up with the sunrise — warblers, flycatchers, sparrows and towhees calling across the treetops. Deer browse on tender buds emerging from dense shrubs. Black bears scrounge for roots, insects and other edibles. It’s an idyllic setting in North Carolina’s Inner Banks, where fields of cotton, soybeans and corn stretch for miles, country roads wend through stands of pines and thousands of bird watchers converge to witness the spring migration. But it’s what’s underground that has drawn scientists and investors to this 23-square-mile (60-square-kilometer) tract: spongy, dense peat up to 15 feet (5 meters) deep. They’re here to save it. Fifty miles (80 kilometers) of ditches dug decades ago for an abandoned farming venture drained much of the water from thousands of years of accumulated peat, leaving the site vulnerable to drought and wildfires, altering its native habitats — and allowing it to emit 130,000 tons of climate-warming carbon dioxide a year. “Our goal is for perpetuity to conserve these lands so they can’t become oil and gas fields, so they’re not mined for phosphorus or turned into parking lots and shopping centers,” said Tripp Wall, CEO of Colorado-based company Pantheon Regeneration. “They’re just these incredible systems that...

BELHAVEN, N.C. — The birds are up with the sunrise — warblers, flycatchers, sparrows and towhees calling across the treetops. Deer browse on tender buds emerging from dense shrubs. Black bears scrounge for roots, insects and other edibles. It's an idyllic setting in North Carolina's Inner Banks, where fields of cotton, soybeans and corn stretch for miles, country roads wend through stands of pines and thousands of bird watchers converge to witness the spring migration. But it's what’s underground that has drawn scientists and investors to this 23-square-mile (60-square-kilometer) tract: spongy, dense peat up to 15 feet (5 meters) deep. They're here to save it. Fifty miles (80 kilometers) of ditches dug decades ago for an abandoned farming venture drained much of the water from thousands of years of accumulated peat, leaving the site vulnerable to drought and wildfires, altering its native habitats — and allowing it to emit 130,000 tons of climate-warming carbon dioxide a year. “Our goal is for perpetuity to conserve these lands so they can’t become oil and gas fields, so they’re not mined for phosphorus or turned into parking lots and shopping centers,” said Tripp Wall, CEO of Colorado-based company Pantheon Regeneration. “They’re just these...