Wednesday Go To Meeting, Followed By Same Tomorrow.

You should have seen this place back in the 80's and early 90's. That's back when the Seashore was busy. Friends and families from all over the States, Canada and Europe flocked to the Seashore to enjoy the surf, fishing, boating, and just about anything fun and responsible you could imagine. Yea, there were a few dim-whits, and still are from time to time but that's true with society as a whole. One of the most remarkable things that occurred here was the clearing of about 90 acres of vegetation around the "dredge pond" at Cape Point, the most popular and often the most productive surf fishing waters anywhere in the world, literally! Anybody that gazed upon what happened once that land was cleared cannot possibly forget it. Literally thousands of birds came to roost and breed in that environment. There were so many birds that the sky looked like a white tornado. A friend of mine described it quite succinctly back in '06 as "something straight out of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom". I guess it was a bit too successful because NPS let the vegetation grow back and pushed the birds out of one of their ideal habitats, a protected area with an ephemeral pond. Everybody showed up to breed there, terns, plovers, oyster catchers, etc. The first NPS report shows tremendous success while the latter by Marcia Lyons muffles through and claims failure even though we still had the "wild Kingdom" stuff going on. In any event, NPS effectivly destroyed what had been prime habitat. And while that was going on (the destruction) Marcia and her husband Jim managed to get an entire swath of beach closed to all but pedestrians that is vital to the purpose of the Seashore. Must be nice to have your own beach on public lands to walk yer dog.
So, quietly, closures began to appear on the beaches. And really, nobody had an issue with it. After all, we don't have issue with the wildlife and being surrounded by the birds, turtles, seals, whales, dolphin and porpoise, is all part of the magic that makes this place what it is.
Every year since, these closures have grown, more and more people have been denied access to the areas of the seashore they like the best and all without any tangible benefit to the wildlife the "darkside" claims to want to protect. I know they'll toss out numbers claiming that nesting is up...but wait till I explain how that works and when I do you'll see right through it.
What is true is that the people that choose to visit this remarkable place are being denied access without sound, peer reviewed science to support the claim of harm to wildlife and the other result is that the hardworking people of the islands are trying hard to figure out how to feed their families. Just how many people can you employ when your business is off 60% for the year because of these unwarranted closures?

Have a meeting in a few and will likely post again this evening...like I said, its a long story.

Tight Lines,

Wheat