Birds and Turtles on the Rebound at Cape Hatteras

By Mariel Colombo on November 4, 2008 - 4:49pm

Every year, Cape Hatteras National Seashore Park is witness to a marvelous event that portrays life in all its majesty...the beginning of life itself.

From May to November, birds such as the American Oystercatcher and reptiles like the Green Sea Turtle choose Cape Hatteras’ white sands as their nesting grounds. Green Sea Turtle nesting takes place during night at two to four-year intervals. It is also during nighttime that hatchlings emerge and waddle toward the sea.

“The consent decree strikes the appropriate balance in addressing conservation and recreation interests and provides much needed protection to wildlife on The Seashore until a final ORV management plan is adopted.”

– Attorney Derb S. Carter, Jr., testifying to Senate on behalf of The Wilderness Society and other groups

These are not the only guests that Cape Hatteras hosts. Stretching along 72 miles of the Outer Banks on the coast of North Carolina, this park is a paradise where a great variety of other birds and plants live.

Birders can spot the Piping Plover with its small stocky body and black ring around the base of its neck during summer. On the beach’s dunes, the Seabeach Amaranth plant displays bright-green rounded leaves.

But all is not perfect in paradise.

Many human visitors – from sunbathers to fishermen enjoy this summertime vacation mecca. Unfortunately, the National Park Service has also allowed unchecked and unregulated use of off-road vehicles that damage sensitive wildlife habitat: running over the birds and crushing the nests on the beaches.

By not taking precautions with beach driving at night or with people driving on the beach to surf fish, the Park Service was lax in directing vehicles away from bird and turtle nesting areas.

Only during the last few years has the Park Service started a process to regulate beach driving. In the meantime, the agency was not protecting the birds and turtles as they should have been.

After Defenders of Wildlife and National Audubon Society filed a lawsuit to gain more protection for these creatures, they soon worked out a temporary compromise with county governments and local off-road vehicle groups.

Together, they reached a court-ordered consent decree that required the National Park Service to provide places for federally and state protected birds and sea turtles to nest on the Seashore during the breeding seasons without potentially getting run over by vehicles.

The Park Service now determines where birds and turtles are nesting and closes those areas until breeding and fledging have occurred. This year, the park service closed 24 miles of beach to ORVs and prohibited nighttime driving from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. to create a safe haven for the wildlife.

The turn of events appeared promising, but the birds and turtles again came under assault by a U.S. Senate bill (S. 3113) that would have upended the hard-won compromise. Lead by recreation policy expert Kristen Brengel, The Wilderness Society applied its legislative muscle and helped stop the legislation in its tracks.

After several years of having a low number of nests at Cape Hatteras, birds and turtles alike are on the rebound. The number of breeding pair of plovers jumped from six to eleven from 2007 to 2008, while the oystercatchers and sea turtles also watched their flocks and bales grow.

The birds and turtles are gaining peace at Cape Hatteras — giving birth to another generation of hatchlings that will go on to take their first flights and sandy steps from the shore…just as their instincts guide them to do.