THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, July 4, 1996 TAG: 9607030011
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A16 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: BY CARL CAHILL
LENGTH: 89 lines
Is Virginia's most remote and least-visited state park to be overrun by crowds of tourists from its most-populous city, Virginia Beach? A decision to admit large groups will be made, possibly later this year, by the people who manage Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge, home of shoreline birds and a stopover for migratory wildfowl.
Only a few miles from the thousands of oiled, sun-tanned and well-heeled visitors to the city's boardwalk is False Cape State Park, immediately south of the refuge and so secluded that for one week each year hunters are encouraged to come and shoot wild pigs. Both the park and the refuge are entirely within Virginia Beach's city limits.
There is no vehicular access to the park. To get there a person must bike or hike five miles under the somewhat-less-than-welcome eyes of refuge employees who feel their first responsibility is to animals, not people.
But, hey, it's 1996, and the entire nation is in a travel frenzy. Every state, city, town and hamlet is wooing tourists; and now the federal government is forming a national commission to lure them from overseas.
What the promoters of Virginia's 41 state parks want to do is invite hundreds of people to cross the refuge in the comfort of buses and trams to visit False Cape State Park, unique in its 5.9 miles of wide, white, deserted beaches, nesting places for endangered sea turtles.
But the plan needs the approval of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, whose primary concern traditionally is protecting nature's living things.
The Fish and Wildlife Service has before it an environmental assessment containing the recommendations of ``a joint planning team composed of professional resource managers from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation and the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.''
The team had a juggling act to do: satisfy everyone that the wildlife in the 7,732-acre refuge would be shielded from ``disturbances'' while daily accepting up to 600 sun-glassed, camera-toting, sandal-shod people who are too lazy to walk or bike the five miles to the 4,321-acre park.
The team claims to have solved that dilemma by proposing that the crowds be taken to the park on ``people movers'' like those used in commercial theme parks, alternately over dike roads and the beach, the route depending on the season and where wildfowl and shorebirds are congregating.
Incredibly, the environmental assessment says that a busload of people is less disturbing to the wildlife than a lone hiker.
More than 60 organizations, including the Audubon Society, the National Wildlife Federation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Wilderness Society and senators and congressmen from North Carolina and Virginia, have been asked to comment on the proposal.
If there's any agreement at all, it'll be a first since the refuge management in 1970 raised objections about bikers and hikers traipsing across land that was supposed to be for ducks, geese, swans, pied-billed grebes, egrets, herons, ibises, semi-palmated plovers, greater and lesser yellowlegs, turtles, deer, foxes, pigs and muskrats, to name a few species. Most of the wild horses were removed a few years ago because they were not indigenous.
The dispute simmered until 1987, when the federal government offered Virginia a 50-foot right of way in exchange for $650,000 and some park land to replace that lost to the easement.
Virginia countered, asking for a permit to build a paved road through the refuge over which tourists, for a fee, would be whisked to the park via a transportation system. Part of the fee would have gone to the refuge. No deal, said the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Environmental groups sued to force the federal agency to care for creatures first; the case was settled when the defendant agreed to determine if there were people uses compatible with wildlife.
Then, two years ago, the manager abruptly closed to the public the gravel roads over refuge dikes from Nov. 1 through May 31, when migratory birds are most active, prompting the environmental assessment.
Earlier this year, perhaps as an indication of what's to come, two ``people movers'' were tested at the park refuge; one was a tram for use on the dikes, the other a balloon-tired truck, with a 40-person capacity, for use on the beach. In the years after the park opened more than 30 years ago, a visitor could hike all day and never see another person.
Success of the environmental assessment's recommendations, however, may depend not so much on U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service approval as on those fierce swarms of summertime pests known as yellow flies, mosquitoes and ticks.
``It's a nice pipe dream,'' says a veteran ranger. ``I don't think that many people will want to come. It's a park for real nature lovers who are real hikers and backpackers.''
False Cape State Park brochures bear him out. ``There is no drinkable water available. . . . Biting insects are numerous, insect repellent is a must. Sunscreen and a hat are recommended during the summer months,'' one brochure states.
Not long ago, according to the ranger, a man, his wife and their two small children spent one night at a primitive camp site at the park. They left the next day, headed for a motel. MEMO: Mr. Cahill is a resident of Chesapeake. by CNB