Improved access for vehicles and pedestrians, better parking, and vehicle capacity limits are among the items contained in the draft off-road-vehicle management plan released Friday by Cape Hatteras National Seashore officials.
The voluminous draft environmental impact statement, spanning more than 800 pages, seeks to find a suitable middle ground between the access ORVers want and protection for threatened or endangered shorebirds and sea turtles sought by environmental and conservation groups. It will be open for public review for 60 days before a final decision is made on an official ORV management plan for the seashore.
The spit of sand that buffers the North Carolina coast from the worst the Atlantic Ocean can toss at it carries an array of contentious issues that seemingly have no easy answers. Foremost among the issues at the national seashore is the use of off-road vehicles to negotiate beaches that are either far from parking lots or which are just far enough from those lots to make it difficult to carry all your gear for a weekend fishing trip.
Cape Hatteras, authorized as America's first national seashore in 1937 but not actually established until 1953, is a beach lover's jewel. The heart of North Carolina's Outer Banks, the cape offers some of the best beaches in the country, is renowned for its surf fishing, has some of the East Coast's best waves for surfing, and has a decided tinge of wildness that is a welcome respite from the Mid-Atlantic's metropolitan areas.
But the seashore's lack of an official ORV management plan led conservation groups a few years back to sue the National Park Service to protect bird and turtle nesting from ORV traffic.
That lack of a formal management plan has "led over time to inconsistent management of ORV use, user conflicts, and safety concerns," as the DEIS notes, and nearly prompted a federal judge to ban ORV traffic entirely. He acquiesced when a management team representing both the Park Service and the opposing groups agreed to work toward a long-term plan while temporary rules were instituted to protect shorebird and sea turtle nesting sites by seasonally and intermittently restricting beach driving access to popular fishing areas.
Environmentalists defended the strict controls on beach driving, arguing that protecting wildlife resources should trump recreationists’ demands for convenient ORV access to the beach. Beach driving fishermen have strongly protested the strict rules. They argue that the federal government has greatly exaggerated the threat posed to wildlife by ORV driving on the beach, and that the current rules make it unreasonably difficult to get to traditionally popular fishing areas. Area businesses detest the restrictions too, citing reduced spending by ORV users.
With that as a backdrop, seashore officials have produced a DEIS that looks at five options, two of which essentially are "no action" proposals. Among the provisions of the seashore's preferred alternative are:
* A permit system for ORV access, although no permit limit would be instituted;
* Annual and short-term permits would be available;
* There would be a "carrying-capacity requirement (peak use limit) for all areas based on a physical space requirement of one vehicle per 20 linear feet for Bodie Island, Hatteras Island, and Ocracoke Island Districts, except that 400 vehicles would be allowed within a 1-mile area centered on Cape Point";
* There would be a variety of access points for "both ORV and pedestrian users, including access to the spits and points, but often with controls or restrictions in place to limit impacts on sensitive resources. This means that some areas may be kept open to ORV users for longer periods of time by reopening some ORV corridors at the spits and points sooner
after shorebird breeding activity is completed" than would be allowed in other alternatives, "or by improving interdunal road and ORV ramp access";
* Increasing parking at pedestrian-access points leading to vehicle-free areas of the seashore, and;
* Seasonal and year-round ORV routes would be designated, although they still could be impacted by temporary closures "when protected-species breeding behavior warrants and/or if new habitat is created."
It's worth noting that while the number of sea turtle nests observed on Cape Hatteras in 2009 slightly declined from 2008, the 104 verified nests were far above the 43 counted just five years ago. Those 2009 nests also produced roughly 5,000 turtle hatchlings, according to the seashore's annual sea turtle report.
Comments
The formatting shortcuts seem to be gone after the recent site update, but you can still italicize if you know the codes.
The codes are generally the same for most message board software, although I've seen some boards that have differences like
vs [youtube] for embedding video sources from YouTube or other video sites. Some board software is compatible with multiple video websites. I don't think this board software currently supports direct embedded video, although it might be possible in some way I haven't tried yet.
/filter/tips/4#filter-bbcode-0
Ahah! Thanks y_p_w! I tried the "Ctrl-I" method to no avail and gave up there. Let's see if it works:
I didn't see any call that the enabling legislation be ignored. I thought that the contention was that "legislative intent" can be very difficult to determine because there are diverse reasons for why a law was written the way it was or voted on by Congress. Even what you quoted says "Let's focus on the laws...."
Very nice!!
I saw that in the question of "Intent" with relation to "Recreation Area" status, which seems kinda diversionary to me.
It really comes down to the interpretations of these statements:
In 1937 Congress established the Cape Hatteras National Seashore Recreational Area with enabling legislation that states: “said area shall be, and is, established, dedicated, and set apart as a national seashore recreational area for the benefit and enjoyment of the people and shall be known as the Cape Hatteras National Seashore Recreational Area.”
Versus
Except for certain portions of the area, deemed to be especially adaptable for recreational uses, particularly swimming, boating, sailing, fishing, and other recreational activities of similar nature, which shall be developed for such uses as needed, the said area shall be permanently reserved as a primitive wilderness and no development of the project or plan for the convenience of visitors shall be undertaken which would be incompatible with the preservation of the unique flora and fauna or the physiographic conditions now prevailing in this area . . .
(Aug. 17, 1937, ch. 687, Sec. 4, 50 Stat. 670; June 29, 1940, ch. 459, Sec. 1, 54 Stat. 702; Mar. 6, 1946, ch. 50, 60 Stat. 32.)
And
"Primarily a seashore is a recreation area. Therefore in its selection, the boundaries should be placed in such a manner that the maximum variety of recreation is provided. Thus while provision for bathing may be the first consideration of these areas, it must be kept in mind that a far greater number of people will be more interested in using a seashore area for other recreational purposes. It is desirable therefore to provide ample shoreline for all types of beach recreation. The Cape Hatteras National Seashore provides such an area in that there is extensive shoreline for all forms of recreation both for immediate use and for future development."
All we ask for in this is balance and flexibility between all of these. Most ORV users realize that we simply must take resource protection into account more than we did 2 decades ago, and are already in compliance.
However, the warring factions are deeply entrenched in a debate that I've seen best summarized this way:
Preferred Environmental Alternative: "Beaches are considered closed in the event that birds/turtles might nest."
Preferred Access Alternative: "Beaches are considered open until the event that birds/turtles do nest."
(You can all bust my chops on the over-simplification and/or minutae' of this analogy, tomorrow...)
We've met in the middle on this before, and I hope we can do so again, but as Kurt said, I have my doubts.
Dapster, I've been watching all this from afar and find the debate for the most part interesting.
However, I am curious why you keep referring to the enabling legislation as creating "Cape Hatteras National Seashore Recreation Area"? The DEIS clearly lays down the legislative history of the seashore, and specifically states that 1937-enacted name was indeed Cape Hatteras National Seashore. As I noted a day or so ago, in 1940 an amendment was passed through Congress to rename it Cape Hatteras National Seashore Recreation Area, but it seems that renaming was "derived clearly from the Secretary’s justification to allow hunting..."
If you have a copy of the 1937 legislation with the "Recreation Area" appendix attached that you can point me to, I'd appreciate it. But really, that's just for form. I'd have to agree with Anon up above that the name of the place really doesn't guide the Park Service's overriding mandate in how to manage it. Rather, the National Park Service Organic Act of 1916 does, and the Redwood National Park Expansion Act of 1978 underscores, and expands, on that.
Now, many have said the Organic Act's mandate for the Park Service is contradictory, that on one hand it calls for the natural resources to be preserved unimpaired for future generations, and then for the parks to be managed for the enjoyment of the public. That seeming conundrum was unraveled in 1997 by the late historian Robin Winks, a Yale professor, who broke down the Organic Act practically word-by-word and pointed out that that first clause, about the preservation of the resources unimpaired, clearly was intended to take precedence over the public's enjoyment of the parks. Courts subsequently have found the same.
Bottom line, the seashore by whichever name you use is part of the National Park System. The National Park Service's foremost mandate is to preserve the units of the park system unimpaired for future generations. And if you do focus narrowly on Cape Hatteras' enabling legislation, it clearly points out the need for both recreation and primitive wilderness, and the amended name change was intended to provide for hunting, not ORV use.
Of course, as we've seen in so many other parks, later forms of recreation evolve long after enabling legislation is passed (ie. Yellowstone and snowmobiles, Cape Lookout and personal watercraft), and so the mandates of the enabling legislation have to be revisited and, if deemed necessary and legally doable, updated. That seems to be the process now under way at Cape Hatteras.
Nevertheless, I don't think you can say without a doubt that recreation trumps conservation on the seashore. But then, that's why there are lawyers;-)
Housekeeping note: Dap, re italics, bold, etc, you should have three letters atop your comment box: B, I, and U. They're used to create bold, italics, and underlined words and sentences. To use them, highlight the text in question that you'd like to make bold, italicize, or underline, and then click on the appropriate button. The icon next to the U is for linking to web urls, and the icon next to that one is for setting out a paragraph of text in highlighted and indented text. If you don't see these buttons, please let me know.
Kurt,
I may be way wrong about the relevance of the "RA" designation, but it is one of the tenents that we as CHNSRA users firmly believe in. You may be totally correct that the OA and the RA can/do indeed trump, but I also believe it will take a court case of the highest order to sort all of this out if the NPS is unable to do so, as you have described.
Evolution of the useage, coupled with the C&T aspects, (and all that we've discussed heretofore), in my mind make this a compelling case from both sides. I consider neither to be a slam-dunk by any means.
There is definitely doubt surrounding either possible outcome on this issue, sorry if I've led you to believe otherwise. Call it "Cautious Optimism", if you will....
Housekeeping:
The letters you describe are not visible on my side, hence my questions as to where they went!
dap
Reading the history of the CHNSRA which Congress did amend the name in 1940 and has never changed since, I think Congress intention was to provide a seashore accessible to all Americans in a time when a majority of our nations seashore property was in private ownership.Was their original intention to preserve it for its natural beauty and to be left unimpaired forever?If we should forget the name Recreation Area than why should we not debate what swimming,fishing,kite fling and a hundred other reasons why people go to the beach should be called.What I dont understand is the argument that areas were not set aside to meet the mandate to preserve.Pea island is 16 miles free of structures,orvs free,and for the most part people free!The townships have built up to almost maximum capacity along the ocean front in the last 30 years and legally.To some Im sure this is an eye sore.Also there are seasonal orv closures for the protection of thousands of vacationers on the beach in the townships for safety reasons.Still sounds fair and balanced so far to me.Then we have orv closures in narrow sections of the beach for safety reasons to protect for obvious reasons.Now we get to whats left for lets say the fisherman or a person that might need an orv to access remote areas of the beach.The closures have severely and clearly reduced accessibility with orvs and walk in pedestrians.Does not seem too fair and balanced to me.Back to my main argument that if the mandates are for preservation only than we have failed to provide a seashore accessible to future generations if it is to be left unimpaired.During one closure visitors were forced to walk a mile in water below the low tide line to access a favorite area.Ok for a few but not exactly accessible.We will have to wait now for a plan to agree with or not but the discussion over the legality or interpretation of the mandates will continue until Congress changes or clarifies it and not a Harvard university professor.
Are you guys still hung up on "recreation area"?
Here's an endangered species list and action plan at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, which is under the joint control of the Bureau of Reclamation and National Park Service. Their primary reason for being under NPS control is recreational boating. That it's a "recreational area" doesn't change that it's federal land with a mandate to mitigate the effect on wildlife.
http://www.gcdamp.gov/keyresc/es.html
In another "National Recreation Area" I've heard of threatened species mitigation efforts. In a "National Seashore" there's a closure to unpowered recreational boating because of the annual seal pupping season. The NPS/federal mandate to to take steps to protect wildlife doesn't change simply on the basis of the description. Even if it were a military base, there are likely to be steps to mitigate the effects on protected species.
What NPS policy is the DEIS violating anonymous? The entire exestence of DEIS was predicated on the fact that NPS did not have a policy in place. The consent decree you speak of that protects 11 documented pairs of piping plovers has resulted int he death of 882 animals deemed predators in just over 2 years. Also the issue is not ORV access it is human access. When the park closes a section of beach for a turtle nest NO ONE has any access to the beach or beyond it. Why is it in Florida a turtle closure is a clearly maked area 5 feet in diamater around the nest yet here in Cape Hatteras it results ina 250 foot closure on 120 foot on average beach that effectively closes it.
When the time comes(very soon i think) when voting people catch on to the millions of dollars spent to keep them out of the national parks that were formed for them and the billions spent to even keep them open for wildlife only(People no longer welcome) the so called Do Good(fuzzy puppy)idealism will become unfunded and considered inconsistent with what is best for the people.One opinion,one vote and one tax deductible donation to my representative and the rights to do it.I will just have to wait to see if i will be able to enjoy CHNS(RECREATION AREA)in the future or not.But enough of my opinion but I encourage everyone to express your opinions whatever they may be.Tight Lines!!!