the explosive growth of saltwater fly- 

 fishing has, in the space of a few years, 

 turned the waters off the hook's rock 

 jetty and Cape Point into a parking lot 

 for boats, a place where sportfishers pay 

 guides $350 per day to cast $5 flies to 

 schools of migrating false albacore. 



The next morning, I hitch a ride 

 with Michael Rikard, the park's natural 

 resources manager, whose job is to see 

 that recreational uses don't negatively 

 affect the park's preservation mandate. 

 In a few weeks, Rikard tells me, the 

 Cape Point will be packed with trucks. 

 But even with the fishers and the 

 growing numbers of daytrippers, 50 

 miles of sand makes for a pretty 

 effective buffer. "If you compare us to 

 Cape Hatteras," he says wryly, "then 

 we're a sleepy little park with no 

 problems." 



We drive along the single two-track 

 sand road that threads the island's spine, 

 watching peregrine falcons pirouette in 



the morning updrafts. Many visitors 

 might describe Cape Lookout as a stark 

 landscape, but on this morning it is 

 anything but. Fire-wheel flowers 

 speckle the lower slopes of the dunes 

 with their brilliant orange and yellow 

 bull's-eyes. The truck groans through 

 soft sand as it climbs the dune line and 

 coasts onto the beach, and the empty 

 stretch of sand seems to invite Rikard to 

 play the Park Service's ultimate trump 

 card in any discussion of its manage- 

 ment of Core Banks and the cape: the 

 undeniability of what the future had in 

 store for Lookout were it not for public 

 ownership. The choice was clear: Look 

 at Bald Head, Figure Eight, Atlantic 

 Beach, Wrightsville. "We could have 

 had that here," Rikard says, his words 

 freighted with the feel of a closing 

 argument. 



Among Rikard 's chief directives is 

 the complicated allocation of the banks' 

 precious sand beaches to all who vie for 



Yeomans and his wife, Clara, have made their home at Cape Lookout 

 in a converted llfesaving service boathouse. 



them. Federally protected sea turtles 

 nest on the beach, as do endangered 

 piping plovers and vast numbers of 

 terns, oystercatchers and other shore- 

 birds. Many of these species are at the 

 fringe of their natural range here, so 

 climatic factors may help explain 

 nesting success rates that are far lower 

 than elsewhere. The islands also have 

 lost their suite of natural predators — 

 the foxes are gone, and bobcats are few 

 or nonexistent — so the population of 

 egg-loving raccoons has exploded. 



But other denizens of the beach 

 weigh heavily in Rikard's calculus of 

 environmental impact. Few sights are as 

 surprising to the unsuspecting visitor as 

 the trucks, vans and campers at the 

 water's edge. Despite outcries that 

 beach driving crushes turtle and tern 

 nests, carves ruts that make it difficult 

 for hatchling loggerheads to crawl safely 

 to the water and disrupts feeding birds 

 as well as beachcombers seeking refuge, 

 the Park Service allows driving on 90 

 percent or more of the Core Banks 

 beachfront. Rikard insists that these 

 human impacts are well managed with 

 specific beach closures during nesting 

 and foraging seasons and a daily turtle 

 patrol during the sea turtle nesting 

 season. 



If nothing else, these vehicles are a 

 nod to the traditional uses of Core Banks 

 and offer compelling evidence that the 

 National Park Service, though despised 

 by locals as an oligarchy that rules from 

 its headquarters on the eastern end of 

 Harkers Island, worked hard to meld 

 local concerns with its national priorities 

 for preservation and wilderness. An 

 early draft for the national seashore even 

 called for intensive park development 

 along much of the islands, including 

 large campgrounds and slips for 

 hundreds of boats on Shackleford Banks 

 and a dredged boat channel down the 

 entire soundfront of Portsmouth Island 

 and Core Banks. Those plans met stiff 

 resistance from locals and were shelved. 



Continued 



COASTWATCH 13 



