Closures And Nesting

I hate to say it but I'm beginning to wonder if 2010 is going to result in near 100% closure of the Seashore. I drove to Avon today and was astounded by the size of the closure between Ramp 38 and Buxton. 38 will be a cul-de-sac shortly. A friend writes on his blog that the closed area between 43 and 44 has been expanded and it sounds like Ramp 45 is almost closed. Its only April 7th.
And check this out. You don't think NPS wants to turn this Seashore into a highly regulated "Disneyland"...just got this in the email this morning...
http://parkplanning.nps.gov/projectHome.cfm?parkId=358&projectId=30061

If you just heard a loud noise, it was probably my head exploding.

So we're in pre-nesting season and all of the imagined and real birds have come to do their bird thing. And so the closures grow. Nesting will begin and NPS will begin a tally of nests, pairs of birds, eggs, chicks, fledged chicks etc..
Derb always touts increased nesting as a sign of success with the consent decree in place. But what does it really mean? Well, he cant tout Plover numbers and he cant tout Oystercatcher numbers so he goes for "the other colonial waterbirds". That would be Least Terns (LETE) for example. This would be a bird whose numbers reportedly increased last year. But wait...over and over again in the LETE counts you see the word "approximately" when at the end of the year they give a finite number. I wonder how that works!

Its the nest count that you really need to pay attention to and here's why:
Lets say that we're standing on the beach and 100 pair of terns come and build their nests. NPS will record 100 nests on their tally sheet under number of nests this year.

Along comes a wave that wipes out all 100 nests. NPS records this event also. The birds come right back and re-nest. BUT, the math changes. Now the NPS record will show 100 pair of terns but the number of nests is now 200 even though this is 100% re-nesting. If it happened again, the nest tally would jump to 300 in spite of the fact that only 100 nests actually exist..

This is the BS we deal with in this fight to save this Seashore. One more example of the government railroading the American people without cause. 

I hope you'll join this fight, we need all the help we can get.

Tight Lines,

Wheat