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Camp

species that use the island. Summer is the primary nesting season for both species. Attracting more visitors to the island during the summer and thus increasing driving on beach while the turtles and plovers are nesting doesn't seem like the best way to protect the critters.
The announcement of the preferred and alternate plans ends a year-long study of what to do with the fishing camp on Davis Island. The Park Service looked at various alternatives, including replacing the Great Island camp with a new camp near the lighthouse.
The DIFF Club is preparing a conceptual plan for the new Great Island camp and new cabin designs that it will submit to the Park Service, which says it welcomes the club's input.

"under utilized" during the "low season" ¾ translation: no one goes in the summer
when it's hot and the bugs make life miserable. New cabins, the Park Service maintains, would attract a "wider variety of park visitors" ¾ translation: lawyers in Explorers ¾ during the summer and presumably turn the "low season" into a high, or at least, middling one.
Both the preferred and alternative plans are chock full of language about "monitoring the effects of visitors and visitor use patterns on threatened and endangered species." They're talking primarily about loggerhead sea turtles and piping plovers, both of which use the island to nest. The Park Service worries that driving on the island could be affecting the turtles and birds. Its anxiety level increased dramatically after a small conservation group in Dare County threatened to sue the agency if it didn't complete a required study of the environmental effects of vehicles on the beach.
That study is ongoing, and the draft management plan and the accompanying environmental assessment of the proposed action contain no information on the effects of vehicles on endangered and threatened species. The Park Service recognizes long-term parking as a low-cost alternative for people who visit the island frequently. "However, NPS must take additional measures to ensure that the island's threatened and endangered species are not adversely affected." The document doesn't spell out what those "measures" might be or why they're needed.
In fact, the preferred and alternate plans seem to have opposing goals. On the one hand, the Park Service wants to increase visitation to the island during the summer by improving accommodations at Great Island, while on the other it wants to protect the two major endangered or threatened

"However, NPS must take additional measures to ensure that the island's threatened and endangered species are not adversely affected."

NPS hopes to finish
ORV study this year

The National Park Service hopes to complete a study of driving at Cape Lookout National Seashore by the end of the year, said Karren Brown, the park's superintendent.
The study, which is to determine the effects of driving on endangered species, was to have been completed in 1982, but was halted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which wanted more information on nesting loggerhead turtles and piping plovers.
But the Park Service never completed the study, and a conservation group threatened a lawsuit if the study isn't completed soon.
If the study shows that vehicles are detrimental to turtles or plovers, the Park Service will have to find a way to limit or further restrict driving on the beach, Brown said.
Beach driving, though, doesn't seem to have deterred nesting turtles. "It's a bumper crop this year," she said. "We've got more nests than we've ever had."
Brown said she would probably have public meetings if further driving restrictions are proposed.