April 19, 2012 – Defenders of Wildlife and the National Audubon Society are choking off the lifeblood of communities that depend on North Carolina's Cape Hatteras National Seashore Recreational Area. In 2008, the National Park Service — the federal agency responsible for the popular 70-mile-long world-class sport fishing and tourist destination — caved in to the two environmental groups' lawsuit claiming human access to the area harms nesting birds.
NPS officials signed a consent decree — locals were not given a choice — and began closing huge swaths of the recreation area's beaches to motorized traffic for bird protection.
Within a year, Cape Hatteras villages — Rodanthe at the north end and everything down North Carolina Highway 12 to Ocracoke at the south — saw their businesses shrivel as longtime customers failed to reappear at the Avon Motel, Froggy Dog Restaurant, Frank & Fran's tackle shop, Teach's Lair Marina and John Couch's Carquest Auto Parts, among many others.
Couch and 15 other local business owners each signed their own affidavits swearing the consent decree was destroying their lives and the lives of employees they had to let go. Families were losing their life savings, their college funds and their homes.
At the time, Defenders' president, Rodger Schlickeisen, scrimped along with his $295,641 salary and Audubon boss John Flicker got by on $322,422 — not counting their handsome $30,000-plus benefit packages.
The consent decree was only temporary, awaiting a "final rule." Last month that rule went into effect with closures even more restrictive than those in the consent decree.
Read the full story at the Washington Examiner.