Anyone who hasn’t visited the Cape Hatteras National Seashore has missed a treat.Although a few villages are scattered at this thin ribbon of sand that shelters N.C.’s sounds from the ocean, one may drive for miles on N.C. 12 and see little except salt marshes, eastern Pamlico Sound and hear the thunder of the Atlantic Ocean’s crashing surf.
Sand dunes, some with native grasses and sea oats waving in the breeze, are abundant, along with shorebirds. Scattered access ramps cut through the dunes and lead to the beaches. Anglers, who have visited the seashore for decades, use the ramps (where driving is permitted by the National Park Service) to reach the ocean.
Fall and spring are popular times for anglers to visit this unique place. From across the United States, fishing fanatics come to sample some of the world’s best surf fishing. Big striped bass, huge red drum, speckled trout, whiting, flounder, bluefish, black drum and other species swim in these roiling waters.
Money spent by visiting anglers allows the villages to survive during fall, winter and spring until summer’s tourist season arrives.
But some people believe the seashore’s natural beauty and resources should be used only by birds and animals. They believe people should have limited access, even though the region was established as a public seashore. Environmentalists, locals and anglers have battled for years about access and human “footprints” on the habitat, with the Park Service often caught in the middle.
Angler/ORV clubs suggested a “negotiated rule-making” process to give everyone a say in how the park should be managed. But Aububon Society and Defenders of Wildlife, while involved in negotiations, filed a lawsuit to stop beach driving because of a perceived threat to shorebirds and turtles. Local towns and angler groups joined the NPS to fight the enviros’ suit.
However, almost no incidents of shorebird or turtle destruction by ORVs are documented. A 2007 report by the Park Service noted the number of breeding pairs of piping plovers was the highest since 1999 and equaled 2006’s. The report also noted no direct evidence of plover deaths caused by ORVs. And there’s been no peer review of the bird population declines claimed by enviromentalists.
A judge approved a consent decree, basically because the Park Service hadn’t adopted a permanent, ordered-in-1972 ORV plan. However, the decree allowed draconian beach closures, which began less than a week after the decree’s approval. Anglers and ORV users were outraged. The cash-strapped Park Service also will be forced to expend thin resources to monitor the health of a few birds, cordon off nesting areas, conduct patrols and hand out fines.
Ironically, in the past, ORV surf anglers not only obeyed park rules but conducted voluntary beach cleanups (the NPS doesn’t have the manpower). For that stewardship, they were slapped by a system that allows environmental extremists to use lawsuits and suspect “critical-habitat” designations to put beaches off limits.
Remember the old riddle that if a tree falls in the forest, but no one hears it, is there a sound? The answer, of course, is no because sound has to be heard by a human whose ear drum responds and whose brain recognizes ear-drum nerve signals as sound.
Enviromentalists obviously disagree with that answer.
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