On Thursday, April 7, U.S. District Court Judge Terrence Boyle will preside over another status conference on the consent decree that settled a lawsuit against the National Park Service by environmental groups.
As part of that consent decree the Park Service must issue annual reports to the courts and all the parties to the lawsuit on the status of protected species and the effort to finalize an off-road vehicle plan at the Cape Hatteras National Seashore. The reports are due by Jan. 31.
Each year since the 2008 consent decree, Boyle has summoned the parties to the court to discuss the reports and be updated on the ORV rulemaking process.
So we assume that is what he wants to hear about next month in Raleigh.
If his past conferences are any indication, Boyle will have a pleasant chat with Derb Carter, attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center. He might ask seashore Superintendent Mike Murray some questions. In the past, he has liked to ask about law enforcement and citations and dwelled on problems at Bodie Island spit.
He may declare ? as SELC has?the consent decree a great success at saving nesting birds and turtles, even though Murray has said repeatedly that one ? or even two seasons do not necessarily indicate a trend.
Last year was a good one for nesting. In fact, 15 piping plover chicks fledged, the most ever at the seashore. All 15 came from nests at Cape Point. None of the nests at the other points and spits fledged chicks.
Boyle might even ask the reason for this. The reason has as much, or more, to do with the fact that the birds arrived early and that the weather was almost perfect for them than the fact that large areas of the beach are closed to all public access under the consent decree. Only one nest ? at Ocracoke?s South Point — was lost to storm tides. Predation was again the main known cause of chick mortality.
The judge probably will not ask about one of the most contentious requirements of the consent decree ? a 1,000 meter closure to ORVs in all directions from a nest after chicks hatch. The closed area for pedestrians is 300 meters.
Beach access advocates and others have continually asked about the science used to establish the 1,000 meters. The Park Service and environmental groups have continued to insist that is the ?best available? science.
I have written extensively about the 1,000 meter buffer and the ?science? behind it and other parts of the consent decree. A blog last March 10 detailed the problems that I and others have had trying to find out how, exactly, the 1,000 meters was chosen as a buffer distance.
The 1,000 meters is mentioned in a study that the National Park Service asked the U.S. Geological Survey to undertake on seashore resource management.
?Synthesis of Managing, Monitoring, and Protection Protocols for Threatened Species and Endangered Species and Species of Special Concern at Cape Hatteras National Seashore, North Carolina,? was released to the public in 2005. The document is also referred to as the ?Patuxent Protocols.?
Dr. Jonathan Cohen, author of the section on piping plovers, calls for the 1,000-meter buffer for unfledged plover chicks, but does not anywhere in the document explain how he reached that distance.
The first mention of the1,000-meter buffer may have been in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service?s 1995 Revised Recovery Plan, but there was no explanation in that plan either for how the buffer was formulated or on what research it was based.
However, even that document gives some leeway to park managers, noting that, as an alternative to the 1,000 meter closure, the minimum size of ?vehicle-free? areas can be based on ?the mobility of broods observed on the site in past years and on the frequency of monitoring.?
That document goes on to say that ?unless substantial data from past years show that broods on a site stay very close to their nest location, vehicle free areas should extend at least 200 meters on each side of the nest site during the first week after hatching.? After that the size and location of the protected area ?should be adjusted in response to the observed mobility of the brood, but in no case should it be reduced to less than 100 meters on each side of the nest.?
It only makes sense that when the Park Service has an army of biotechnicians monitoring piping plover nesting behavior, nests, and chicks that they might be able to make some more reasonable management decisions about how much area should be closed to access, especially after the chicks leave the nest to forage.
And there is some interesting information about the movement of the piping plover broods in the 2010 annual report from the Park Service.
According to the report, chick movement was:
- Brood 1 at Cape Point moved as far as 194 meters from the nest and had an estimated foraging territory of approximately 5 acres.
- Brood 2 at Cape Point moved as far as 245 meters from the nest and foraged over approximately 3.7 acres.
- Brood 3 at Cape Point traveled as far as 210 meters and foraged over approximately 5.1 acres.
- Brood 4 at Cape Point moved as far as 330 meters and had a foraging territory of approximately 9.4 acres.
- Brood 5 at Cape Point moved as far as 70 meters from the nest and had a foraging territory of about 1 acre.
- Brood 6 at Cape Point moved as far as 515 meters from the nest and had an estimated foraging territory of approximately 14 acres, which included 673 meters of shoreline from just west of Salt Pond Road towards Cape Point.
- Brood 14 on South Beach moved as far as 190 meters and had foraged over about 4.5 acres.
- Brood 12 on Ocracoke?s North Point moved as far as 365 meters and foraged over an estimated 2.6 acres.
- Brood 9 on Ocracoke?s South Point moved no more than 15 meters before all were lost.
- Brood 11 at South Point moved the most ? as far as 800 meters, but once they got to where they wanted to go, they foraged over only 4.3 acres.
- Brood 13 at South Point moved as far as 225 meters and had a foraging territory of about one-half acre.
So why is it that we need the 1,000 meter buffer in all directions, which is about 775 acres, when the chicks aren?t moving that far?
Furthermore, the annual report notes that once they hatched, chicks were monitored for a few hours each morning and afternoon until they fledged or were lost. It also says that depending on staff availability, some broods received dawn-to-dusk monitoring.
Is the Park Service?s resource management staff not smart enough to monitor the broods and keep ORVs and pedestrians at a distance ? but not at a distance of 12 football fields?
It makes sense that when the broods establish their foraging territory, the Park Service might open up some closed areas or allow corridors for vehicles and people to pass through.
That?s called managing for both resource protection and public access to the seashore.
Click here to read the text of the 2010 annual report on piping plovers
Click here to see the maps of foraging territory
