While the potential exists for the National Park Service's preferred off-road vehicle plan for Cape Hatteras National Seashore to be detrimental to piping plovers, sea turtles, and seabeach amaranth, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials believe the plan will be at least minimally helpful to all three in the long-run.
In a lengthy "biological opinion" assessing preferred Alternative F in the seashore's Final Environmental Impact Statement on an ORV management plan, FWS officials conclude that management tools should provide sufficient protection of those three species to endure continued ORV driving on the 67-mile-long seashore.
But that conclusion comes near the end of the 157-page document, one that notes high up that "potential" exists for piping plovers, a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, to be adversely affected during nesting, wintering, and migration seasons; for three species of sea turtles that come ashore to nest at Cape Hatteras, and their resulting offspring, to be adversely affected, and; for seabeach amaranth, a threatened beach plant with distinctive fleshy, reddish stems, to also be adversely affected by allowances for ORVs and pedestrians under the preferred alternative.
The bulk of the document is spent on biological backgrounds on the species, information that addresses their range, population numbers, habitats, population dynamics, existing threats such as predation and coastal development, even how climate change might impact them. It also examines how beach driving and pedestrians could affect the species, and examines baseline conditions for the species.
When it comes to human presence on the seashore, the FWS researchers noted that all of the concerned species are at a disadvantage. Vehicles can, and do, run over piping plovers and their fledglings as well as sea turtle hatchlings and buried nests in these settings, pets can scatter plover fledglings, and beach goers can harass sea turtles and their hatchlings, and crush plover nests as well as amaranth plants and scatter their seeds.
At the same time, the document notes, management actions seashore officials can take under Alternative F can be beneficial to all three species.
"These beneficial effects can be categorized as measures to limit the interaction of vehicles, pedestrians, and their pets with nesting, migrating, and wintering piping plovers and their nests, hatchling and juvenile piping plovers, germinating seabeach amaranth and nesting sea turtles and their nests, eggs, and hatchlings," reads one section of the report.
After analyzing all the potential impacts and the off-setting beneficial effects of Alternative F, the biological opinion concludes that:
* (i)t is reasonable to conclude that implementation of the proposed ORV management plan will allow the breeding population of piping plovers to continue to grow at CAHA, barring events such as major changes in habitat conditions due to storms. Under the proposed management plan breeding piping plovers will continue to be exposed to potential human disturbance that may cause the population to grow at a slower rate than would occur in the complete absence of disturbance, and may cause the breeding population size to stabilize at a level below that which the available habitat could support in the absence of disturbance. Because we do not have a means of estimating the population growth rate at a particular locale (without or without disturbance), or the actual carrying capacity of the habitat within CAHA, the magnitude of these effects is unknown.
* Despite the continued potential for some adverse effects, the USFWS expects implementation of Alternative F should afford a reasonable opportunity for successful nesting of sea turtles annually. The proposed management activities would contribute to achieving the desired future conditions for nesting sea turtles...
* The USFWS expects implementation of Alternative F to afford a reasonable opportunity for at least a minimal amount of successful germination annually at CAHA’s most significant sites (Bodie Island, Cape Point, Cape Hatteras spit and Ocracoke spit). This is expected to potentially produce a slight population increase of seabeach amaranth over the near term.
Comments
Please provide documentation of any case of "Vehicles can, and do, run over piping plovers and their fledglings". To my knowledge, there is no documented case of this happening at CAHA.
Anonymous, read a bit more of this sentence:
You're right that there has been no documented case of this occurring at Cape Hatteras, but it has happened in a similar beach setting, at Fire Island National Seashore. (Source: The Fire Island National Seashore: A History, by Lee Koppelman and Seth Foreman, page 94.
So we can both agree that there are no documented cases of piping plovers having been run over by vehicles at Cape Hatteras?
Your inclusion of this statement in an article about the CAHA ORV Management Plan suggests that piping plovers have been run over at CAHA. To suggest that this has happened, even with your 'in these settings' qualifier, is a disservice to readers.
Cape Hatteras is not Fire Island. What happens outside of the Seashore boundaries at Cape Hatteras has no bearing on what goes on inside. If it did, the great numbers of least terns nesting on the Cora June dredge island mere hundreds of yards outside of the Seashore could surely be counted in the bird counts. Sadly, they are not.
(Source: Junk Science vs. Cora June Island - http://obx-access.wikidot.com/junk-science)
Anonymous,
We can agree that the USFWS review found no documented cases. But that's not to say there haven't been any instances. As the biological opinion clearly notes, plovers -- adults or chicks -- could easily be run over without the motorist noticing.
The following, also from the biological opinion, speaks to the potential for plovers being run over:
And a bit further it says this:
To say that "what happens outside of the seashore boundaries at Cape Hatteras has no bearing on what goes on inside" is debatable in the case, at least, of plovers and vehicles and pedestrians. Obviously the USFWS reviewers thought plover incidents outside Cape Hatteras were germane to their review of the preferred alternative.
As far as the FWS comparing the outside world to the Cape Hatteras World of plovers...
Why does Cape Hatteras have 1000 meter buffers and all other locations much less?
Answer: The FWS reviewers were evidentally asked only to review Biased Anti orv facts!
As far as ORV tracks in enclosures... The numbers are far exceeded by pedestrians and no one is crying about regulating them?!
As far as you stating "But that's not to say there haven't been any instances." That is like me stating that these birds never existed on the island before the late 1980's because no one was counting them!
In turn I am in full agreement with Anon above because the NPS FWS and DOI all word these inflammatory statements to make the ORV groups look bad to 80% who read and cannot comprehend what they are reading.
It is like stating that the plovers had a record year but not mentioning that over 50% of the chicks were killed by Ghost crabs and the like and not ORV's.
Matt,
Both Alternative F and the biological opinion address pedestrians, as well as predation. Neither single out ORVs. The rub, no doubt, stems from the fact that this is an "ORV" plan, not an "ORV and Pedestrian" plan or a "Wildlife Protection" plan.
As for ghost crabs and plovers, here's what the biological opinion had to say about them:
Without documentation you have no real science, just the 'maybe', 'probably', and 'possibly' junk science that is passed off as 'best-available science'.
Again, without documentation you have NO science.
I've been driving at CHNRS since early 70's. I've never even come close to hitting a bird, why? Because God gave them wings to escape danger. If the birds were that dumb and vulnerable they would have been extinct thousands of years ago from predators who are much better adapted to catch them. Vehicles are not the problem, if anything they keep the predator numbers down and help the birds. But this is not really about the birds is it Audubon? No, it is about you and your lawyer's cash flow isn't it? Another freedom lost, another community gravely injured, another government promise broken and stomped into the ground. Sure It's criminal but the government thrives on that, give em a chance to make some MORE laws..yeah, thats what we need alright....never ends..total bs.