One up for the plovers and oystercatchers

[Rosalie]

One up for the birds

 

 

By BILL GEROUX

TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER

 

 

 

Some fishermen and business owners on Hatteras Island cried betrayal this week after the National Park Service cut off access to three popular surf-fishing spots to protect nesting shorebirds.

 

"This is going to be economic disaster for the island," said Carol Dillon, who has run the Outer Banks Motel in Buxton, N.C., since the 1950s. She accused the Park Service of breaking a half-century-old promise never to bar fishermen from the barrier spit at Cape Point.

 

Chris Canfield of the Audubon Society of North Carolina called the closures a necessary step to protect endangered piping plovers and other shorebirds in one of their few refuges on the heavily developed Outer Banks. He said studies suggest the economic damage will be limited.

 

The closure on Thursday of Cape Point and similar barrier spits at Bodie Island and south Ocracoke came a week after a federal judge in Raleigh, N.C., signed a consent decree to settle a lawsuit brought by the Audubon Society and Defenders of Wildlife. Optimists had suggested the decree would bring peace in a long-running struggle between four-wheel-drive fishermen and champions of the birds. But the settlement eliminated any flexibility the Park Service had in trying to balance the interests of the two sides, said Cyndy Holda, a spokeswoman for Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

 

In each of the three closures this week, she said, the birds -- plovers, oystercatchers  ...................

 

(Read the full report at http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/sports.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2008-05-10-0092.html)

 

 

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