THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 23, 1994 TAG: 9409220163
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 49 lines
Even the superpowers at the height of the Cold War practiced a sort of peaceful co-existence that sometimes eludes adamant conservationists. The latest battle pitting Back Bay Wildlife Refuge against False State Cape Park is waged on two familiar fronts - wild fowl vs. people and the feds vs. the state - and adds a public-property twist to the smoldering private-property-rights war.
Virginians' only land access to the park is through the federal refuge, either along the beach on the ocean side or a series of dikes on the inland side. The refuge wants to close the dike route from Nov. 1 through May 31 because, according to a federal study, human activities like hiking and biking bother the birds. But the state park gets more than half its visitors during those months, the dikes provide more reliable access than the beach and the improvements the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to the refuge areas that are open year-round could keep visitors from wandering on down to False Cape.
Nevermind the protestations that the federal refuge has no designs on the state park. If it can in effect control visitation to the park, it won't have to usurp the park itself.
The usurpation of effective control isn't playing well with state officials. One called it the ``typical arrogance of the federal government,'' which it is. It's also typical arrogance of an elite that has usurped the label ``environmentalist'' and pressured Congress, regulators and, as in this case, the courts into supporting a make-way-for-ducks agenda that disdains nature's adaptability, the human factor and private property rights - or, in this case, public property rights.
The response is increasingly backlash, to the extent that green groups are stalling federal environmental legislation to avoid amendments that would halt such regulatory goofiness as fining a farmer $4,000 for killing a grizzly in self-defense.
Does the Fish and Wildlife Service really need to hang a do-not-disturb sign on the Back Bay refuge for seven months a year? Maybe. But it needs to care a lot more, too, about ruffling the feathers of state and federal taxpayers who directly or indirectly underwrite conservation - and who are bothered at least as much by high-handed bureaucrats as heron are by hikers. by CNB