Across the continent, on the Pacific Ocean, there is a national seashore that is grappling with issues similar to those that face the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.
That would be the Point Reyes National Seashore on the California coast north of San Francisco.
A friend and Free Press reader sent me an article last month from the Nov. 1 issue of The New York Times.
That clipping lingered on my desk through last month?s damaging northeaster, and when I found it again this week, I was struck with the issues at Point Reyes and how similar some of them are to Cape Hatteras seashore issues. And I wondered what, if any, lessons we here at Cape Hatteras might learn from what has happened there.
Our issue is access to the seashore beaches by park visitors, specifically, but not limited to, off-road vehicle use on the beach.
At Point Reyes, the beaches are too rocky and the cliffs too steep to even consider driving.
The issue there is commercial activity in the park.
According to published reports, the Drakes Bay Oyster Company has a lease that expires in 2012, and the National Park Service has said it cannot renew the lease because federal law requires it to eliminate commercial activity and return the area to wilderness.
Kevin Lunny, the oyster company owner, is fighting to keep his lease.
Environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and The National Parks Conservation Association, support the Park Service in its effort to rid the seashore of this intrusive commerce.
New York Times reporter Leslie Kaufman wrote in the Nov. 1 article:
?The furor over the oyster lease has also drawn in partisans across the country because it plays into an old debate: Are the national parks primarily for preserving untouched wilderness, or for preserving the historic human imprint on the land, too??
Beginning to sound familiar?
Lunny has owned the company only since 2005, though the oyster farm, Kaufman writes, is 70 years old and predates the establishment of the seashore. And Lunny argues that it ?is part of the historical working landscape of the area.?
Reporter Kaufman notes that the controversy has split local areas into ?passionately opposed camps.?
Lunny and his supporters say that the Park Service has relied on faulty scientific reports that exaggerate the threat the oyster farm presents to the seashore?s flora and fauna.
Environmentalists disagree and see Lunny as a businessman who wants to continue to make profits as the expense of the estuary.
?It?s the beginning of the end of the wilderness,? a leader of a local environmental group told the Times? reporter.
Sound even more familiar?
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has come to the aid of the oyster farmer ? sort of.
According to an article posted in the local Marin Independent Journal on Oct. 5, Feinstein backed down from a proposal that would have required the National Park Service to extend the farm?s lease.
Instead, the newspaper reported, Feinstein agreed to let Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar decide the matter. A provision in the fiscal year 2010 appropriations bill gives Salazar the option to extend the lease for 10 years.
However, Feinstein may have done something even more important than requiring the extension.
?When National Park Service biologists published reports suggesting that the farm was responsible for a decline in the harbor seal population at Drakes Estero,? according to the Marin Independent Journal report, ?Feinstein called for a National Academy of Sciences investigation into the matter.?
The academy reviewed the documents and reports from Park Service scientists that claimed the oyster farm?s motorboats were destroying eelgrass and spooking seals off sandbars during the birthing season ? among other things.
However, in a report issued in May, the academy found insufficient data to determine that seals and other wildlife were being harmed, and it criticized the Park Service science, saying it has ?exaggerated the negative and overlooked potentially beneficial effects of the oyster culture operation.?
The Contra Costa Times, another local newspaper said of the report:
?While the report acknowledges that the activities associated with oyster harvesting are known to disturb seals, it concludes that none of the studies conducted so far by the National Park Service or other agencies show that the Drakes Bay Family Farms workers actually are causing the animals stress or harm.
?The academy report also makes the controversial claim that oysters have had a long history in Drakes Estero, and that the Pacific oysters imported by Drakes Bay Family Farms may be filling an ecological niche similar to that once held by the area’s native Olympia oysters.?
So when Lunny and his powerful supporter Feinstein asked the Park Service to ?show them the science,? the science came up short.
This should really sound familiar to beach access advocacy groups and others who have been asking the Park Service to show them the science on the claims that environmental groups have made about ORV ? and even pedestrian access ? to Cape Hatteras. And there has been heavy criticism of the buffers that the environmentalists required in the consent decree that settled their lawsuit against the Park Service.
Some say there is no basis in science for many of the consent decree requirements.
Indeed, the Park Service calls it only ?the best available science.?
There are also some other observations in The New York Times article. And those should not be at all comforting for supporters of beach access at Cape Hatteras.
According to the Times report, Jon Jarvis, who was recently confirmed as the new director of the National Park Service, supported ending the oyster farm?s lease when he oversaw Point Reyes as a regional park director.
?Many people concerned with protecting the commercial tradition in parks see Mr. Jarvis?s desire to end the lease as evidence that he will usher in an era of antagonism,? Kaufman wrote.
And the reporter added, ?Mr. Jarvis declined to be interviewed about Drakes Bay. Aides at the Park Service said he saw no benefit in discussing the issue with reporters.?
So much for transparency.
And finally, after the National Academy of Sciences issued its findings, Kaufman reported, ?Mr. Jarvis, while acknowledging some problems with the science, vigorously stood up for his staff members.?
We know little about Jarvis and where he stands on the issues at Cape Hatteras, so it may be premature to jump to too many conclusions.
However, I read enough to be concerned about the long-range ORV rulemaking that is reaching a critical stage here at Cape Hatteras.
The issue at Point Reyes is balancing commercial interests with protection of resources. Here the issue is more balancing recreational (and some commercial) interests with resource protection.
But there is a common theme in both cases:
Are the national parks primarily for preserving untouched wilderness or for preserving the historic human imprint on the land, too??
How can we stimulate our senior US Senator (Mr. Burr) to request a similar National Academy of Sciences review of the ?best available science? that?s been put forward as the basis for access restrictions at Cape Hatteras?
One thing we do know a ?Jon Jarvis?. He has a brother named Destry Jarvis who was one of the sticks in the mud of Reg Neg.
Again we have the knee jerk reaction to ?science? by NPS. When will common sense be restored to the problem solving process we were all taught in High School.
Point Reyes has: “Today, the seashore has the largest active agricultural acreage of any national park. Two large historic ranching districts, comprising more than 28,000 acres, or about one-third of national seashore-administered lands, are active beef and dairy ranches.” excerpt from the Point Reyes Management Plan.
Surely there must be problems with runoff from fertilizer, pollution from manure, erosion from farm equipment, compaction of sand from the animals hooves???These are problems we hear about in other Parks. How long will it be before the same folks we face at Cape Hatteras, Assateague, Cape Cod and other Parks, have the ranches removed at Point Reyes? When is enough ?.enough! Can?t we have common sense enter these conversations about the use of OUR Parks?
Are the national parks primarily for preserving untouched wilderness or for preserving the historic human imprint on the land, too?”
That?s an easy one to answer. Are they going to remove the Wright Brothers memorial and other artifacts restoring the area to “wilderness”? Of course not. Just as here in Dayton we have the Wright Brother Aviation National park which is a collection of historical buildings. Wilderness has nothing to do with it. Obviously the one size fits all approach of everything being preserved as wilderness is a fallacy. The idea is to preserve the characteristics that existed and made it worth being a park in the first place. In the case of Point Reyes it would seem that included an oyster farm. In the case of CHNSRA it would include driving on the beach. That all these decisions will be made by a few people in the 10 mile square on the Potomac is almost criminal.
Junk science is a real problem. The revelations contained in the 3000 emails about climate change research certainly highlight the dubious validity of much of the science being done today. With 99% of the science being funded by either governments or special interest groups how can a sensible person not view it with a jaundiced eye? Sadly science has been co-opted by money and politics. ?Best available science? should not be used if it?s not good science in the first place.