North Carolina Sportfishing Access Issues

 

 

Information You Need to Know

Off-Road Vehicle Management Plan
Executive Order 11644 of 1972 requires federal agencies permitting ORV use on agency lands to make regulations for such use. Due to this Order, the National Park Service (NPS) is developing an Off-Road Vehicle (ORV) Management Plan for the Cape Hatteras National Seashore Recreational Area (CHNSRA). The NPS maintains that ORV's must be regulated in a manner that appropriately addresses resource protection—including protected, threatened and endangered species—and potential conflicts among the various CHNSRA users. The NPS has assigned a high priority to the completion of this ORV Plan and subsequent regulations.

Since ORVs are necessary to access many sportfishing areas of the CHNSRA, the concern is that the ORV Plan may give little consideration to economic impacts to any segment of the sportfishing industry and the communities that depend on sportfishing. The implementation of the ORV Plan poses serious questions about the future of recreational fishing in the CHNSRA and presents a serious challenge to sportfishing because:

  • The ORV Plan could ultimately prevent reasonable access to many of the CHNSRA’s best marine sportfishing areas;
  • The ORV Plan and the various designations made under it is a complex process making it difficult for anglers and the public to understand;
  • Statewide, anglers are not coordinated to oppose large unwarranted ORV restrictions;
  • Environmental groups supporting access closures under the ORV Plan are well-organized; and
  • Some angler groups and the public do not realize that surf fishing at the CHNSRA is threatened.

The CHNSRA Negotiated Rulemaking (RegNeg) Committee will be assisting the NPS in its development of the ORV Management Plan. The RegNeg consists of various stakeholders in the CHNSRA, including environmental groups, anglers, business-owners, and tourism organizations, among others, and will be working to reach consensus on issues related to the ORV Plan over the next year. The first official RegNeg meeting was held in Buxton, North Carolina, in early January 2008. This meeting focused on finalizing the committee ground rules and understanding the coinciding economic assessment and evaluation under the National Environmental Policy Act. The second meeting, held in Nags Head in February, and the third meeting, held in Avon in March, focused on identifying the ORV and other issues the RegNeg should concentrate on and how to resolve them. Public comments at the RegNeg meetings focused on the need to protect beach access and the potential economic impacts of closing large portions of the beach. The fourth meeting is scheduled for May 8-9, 2008.

Meanwhile, on February 20, 2008, the Defenders of Wildlife and the National Audubon Society (Plaintiffs) filed an injunction asking that all ORV access, except for essential vehicles, be stopped on the CHNSRA. The Plaintiffs argued that the NPS’s Interim Protected Species Management Plan (Interim Plan), a plan put in place to protect nesting waterbirds and shorebirds until the ORV Management Plan is completed, did not provide adequate protection. The federal government declined to defend the Interim Plan and entered into settlement negotiations with the Plaintiffs.

In late April 2008, Federal District Judge Terrence Boyle approved a consent decree outlining the details of the settlement agreement, which will remain in effect until the RegNeg Committee has completed its work and the NPS issues a final long term ORV Management Plan in three years. The details of the settlement agreement are extensive and put in place protections for shorebirds and waterbirds that far exceed the protections outlined in the Interim Plan. These protections have resulted in extensive restrictions on ORV access to key surf fishing spots in CHNSRA and an undue economic burden on the local economy.

For more information on this issue, read these local news articles:

• What’s driving beach restrictions 4-10-08
• Parties to ORV lawsuit agree on settlement 4-16-08
• Three popular areas closed to ORVs under consent decree  5-5-08


Re-Designation of ESA Critical Habitat for Piping Plover Campaign
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is proposing to re-designate portions of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore Recreation Area (CHNSRA) as critical habitat for the piping plover. This proposal revisits a previous designation that was rejected by a Federal District Court in 2004. The re-designation is aimed to protect nesting piping plovers from pedestrians on the beach, pets, predation, off-road vehicle (ORV) use, and other recreational uses.

The CHNSRA is the northernmost end of the wintering range for piping plovers, and the FWS has not made its case for why this marginal area is essential to the conservation of the species. Nonetheless, the Defenders of Wildlife and the Audubon Society jointly filed suit in 2007 contending that the NPS was not meeting the requirements of the Endangered Species Act as it relates to protection for the piping plover and other shore birds at the CHNSRA. This eventually developed into the settlement agreement outlined above.

Critical habitat is defined as habitat that requires special management considerations. However, until the settlement agreement was put in place, the CHNSRA was managed in part by the Draft Interim Protected Species Management Plan (Interim Plan), a plan which was submitted to the FWS for review and comment. The management protections provided by the Interim Plan were put in place specifically to provide the piping plover with the necessary habitat protection, without the need for a critical habitat designation and its associated burdens, until the ORV Management Plan (outlined above) is developed. When complete, the ORV Management Plan will also include protections for nesting piping plovers.

If all or portions of the CHNSRA are eventually designated as critical habitat for piping plover, public access to the beaches of the national seashore will be severely limited on a permanent basis until such designation is lifted. Limited access means the limited ability to use ORV’s to access a large number of surf fishing sites in the CHNSRA.

For more information, please examine the FWS’s proposed Amended Designation of Critical Habitat for the Wintering Population of the Piping Plover.


Keep America Fishing’s Goal and Purpose for North Carolina

At $8.5 million, North Carolina is 5th in state tax revenue earnings from saltwater sportfishing. At almost $754 million, sportfishing’s annual economic output is not insignificant.

The goal of North Carolina's sportfishing advocates and anglers is to maximize the conservation benefit to the marine and surrounding environment while minimizing unwarranted closures of NC beaches to surf fishing.

The purpose of pursuing this goal is to:

  • Maintain and improve the conservation of North Carolina marine fisheries and associated natural resources so as to improve the overall health of the ocean and adjacent habitat;
  • Assure that the process for future closures or designations under the NC National Park Service relies on biological and economic information in a balanced fashion; and
  • Increase sportfishing opportunities in North Carolina from their current economic and participation levels.

North Carolina Saltwater Recreational Fishing Facts

  • Generates $753.9 million annual economic output
  • Generates $388 million in NC retails sales
  • Supports 8,551 North Carolina jobs
  • Generates $8.5 million in NC income taxes
  • Pays $185.7 million in NC salaries and wages
  • NC has over 656,658 saltwater anglers

The American Sportfishing Association (ASA), the sportfishing industry’s trade association, is working to ensure that anglers' and boaters' voices are heard as marine and aquatic management plans are developed. Please donate to financially help ASA with this process.

Please visit this page regularly to check for action alerts on this important sportfishing access issue. Click here to view all of the Keep America Fishing action alerts.