November 22, 2013 — Facing the prospect of yet more regulation off their beaches, Outer Banks residents at a hearing Thursday in Manteo took to appealing directly to agency officials for relief.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is proposing to designate northern North Carolina offshore waters as critical habitat for loggerhead turtles. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has a separate proposed rule for the land-based habitat.
“We have already lost income because of some of the other environmental studies,” Marianne O’Neal of Hatteras told NOAA staff conducting the meeting at the county administrative building. “We are asking for your help to keep the environmental special interest groups at bay. Please reconsider. Please.”
In a brief presentation about the proposed rule, NOAA biologist Susan Pultz explained that the loggerhead has been listed on the Endangered Species Act as threatened since 1978, prior to implementation of the critical habitat rule. But when the listing was revised in 2011, the agency was compelled by law to designate critical habitat, which defines areas crucial to conservation of the species that may require special management considerations or protection.
But a lawsuit filed in January by the Center for Biological Diversity, Oceana, and the Turtle Island Restoration Network against the National Marine Fisheries Service – a branch of NOAA – and Fish and Wildlife created further pressure to get the rules published.
Pultz said that federal management of the turtles has already included numerous agencies, and she does not anticipate that a critical habitat designation would involve any additional management beyond minor paperwork.
“We have considered habitat every time we have consulted with the other agencies already,” she said.
NOAA Fisheries has jurisdiction of the turtles in the water, where they migrate and forage, corresponding with beach habitat that Fish and Wildlife has proposed to designate. Although the agencies are working separately on their proposed rules, Pultz said they intend to release them concurrently.
The ESA requires the designation for threatened or endangered species on the basis of the best scientific data available, taking into consideration impacts on the economy. But the law also has wiggle room. The Secretary of Commerce has the discretion –unless it would cause species extinction –to exclude areas if it is determined that the benefits of exclusion outweigh those of a critical habitat designation.