CHINCOTEAGUE NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Va. – A sign at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service visitor center here states a simple motto: "Where Wildlife Comes First." But many visitors never see the sign, or much wildlife. Cars stream past the center on hot summer days, headed for a mile-long public beach at the refuge's southern end. The prime goals are sand, surf, and a parking spot close to the water.

But sea-level rise threatens the refuge's future as a beach destination. It's on Assateague Island, a barrier island off the coasts of Virginia and Maryland. The whole island is protected as a national seashore, but different parts have diverse missions. Most of the Virginia section is a wildlife refuge except for the beach, an enclave run by the National Park Service. The refuge draws up to 1.5 million visitors every year through the adjacent town of Chincoteague. In a survey conducted by the town last year, 80 percent of visitors rated going to the beach as their top priority.

The beach is broad, clean, and unspoiled by development. It's also in one of the most-exposed zones of the island, and often floods during storms. When this happens, as it did during a 2009 nor'easter and again in 2011 during Hurricane Irene, the adjacent parking lots are washed out and have to be rebuilt. Even though they're surfaced with loose sand and shells, rebuilding is expensive – up to $700,000 per episode. Managers have preserved the lots, big enough for 960 cars, by repeatedly moving them west, away from the ocean side of the island, after washouts. Zones that used to be parking areas in the 1990s are now underwater.

The National Park Service has advised the Fish and Wildlife Service to move the recreation zone north to a more protected area. "We understand that the town of Chincoteague's economic viability is linked to beach parking," said Trish Kicklighter, superintendent of Assateague Island National Seashore. "But you need to let the dunes act natural and move back when they want to. The current area is not wide enough to maintain a parking lot and a swimming beach."

Barrier islands are naturally unstable, constantly changing shape under the forces of waves and wind. When storms flood the east, or ocean, side of Assateague, they wash sand over to the west side of the island and build it up. But as sea levels rise, floods are becoming more frequent and severe. The Fish and Wildlife Service projects that by 2100 rising seas will flood large sections of the Chincoteague refuge's coastal marshes.

Fish and Wildlife is writing a new 15-year management plan for the refuge, igniting a battle over the fate of the beach. Instead of spending more money to maintain a vulnerable parking lot, the agency would move the beach north and build new parking, possibly supplemented by a shuttle from a new satellite lot on Chincoteague.

Local officials oppose these ideas. Before 1962, when a bridge was built connecting the town of Chincoteague to Assateague Island, Chincoteague was a sleepy fishing community. Now the town is a tourist gateway, with seashore visitors pumping $TK million into the town annually, according to a Fish and Wildlife Service estimate. Local officials want the beach preserved at all costs.

Chincoteague Mayor John Tarr and local business owners argue that moving the beach or shifting even partly to public transit will drive visitors to more convenient locations like Ocean City, Maryland to the north or Virginia Beach to the south. "I feel we are being railroaded into less or no parking at the beach, and forced to ride a trolley system in the future," Tarr told a House Natural Resources subcommittee at a hearing last February.

Instead they want federal agencies to add a new parking lot with 300 more spaces and bring in the Army Corps of Engineers to do beach restoration, such as pumping sand from offshore to rebuild the beach. Federal managers oppose engineering solutions because they conflict with laws and policies that called for letting natural shoreline processes occur without intervening.

Chincoteague's beach-inside-a-refuge situation may be unique, but rising sea levels will affect all of the 167 national wildlife refuges that are located along U.S. coastlines. "No one really knows what the solution is yet – we're still experimenting with strategies to make refuges more resilient, and it's specific to each refuge," said Noah Matson, vice president for climate change and natural resource adaptation at Defenders of Wildlife.

7 Comments

1. 1. Sisko 08:46 AM 8/22/12

   Unscientific American publishes more propaganda on the topic of climate change.
   
   Sea level is rising at 3mm per year. Any local change greater than that amount is due to changes in land height and has nothing to do with AGW.
   
   How is it not obvious to all that unScientific American is pushing an agenda and not accurate science?

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2. 2. hanbroekman 09:15 AM 8/22/12

   As a primary school boy almost 60 years ago in Holland, I was taught that to prevent dune erosion the Dutch planted a grass called "helm" (according to wikipedia it is Ammophila arenaria). Its 1-2 foot high grass-like leaves catch wind-blown sand and stabilize the dunes against wind and water erosion. I remember having to be careful with it, because its edges were sharp enough to cut your skin. Something similar (?) could be used to stabilize US coastal areas.

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3. 3. BillR 09:26 AM 8/22/12

   Demand economic benefit over common sense. Make Chincoteague pay the price of maintaining the beach and the economics will be more realistic. I bet they would seriously start looking into a beach shuttle to keep the costs down.

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4. 4. dek0609 11:10 AM 8/22/12

   Delaware's rate is closer to 4mm/yr. Subsidence in Delaware is avg 1.7 mm/yr. Problem there is decreased sand in the the longshore current and the continuous erosion and island rollback. Those ponies on Assateague suck anyhow. You can't have a dune or plant grass on a non porous parking lot. Where dunes exist we have various grasses that help stabilize the dunes.

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5. 5. sicky in reply to Sisko 12:11 PM 8/22/12

   Virtually every scientific institution and organization studying climate on this earth as well as virtually every scientific publication is convinced of the reality of climate change. Yet you thing SA is pushing an agenda. They are pushing science. Go back to your cave, turn on Fox News and give it a rest.

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6. 6. Sisko in reply to sicky 01:55 PM 8/22/12

   sicky
   
   I perfer accurate science and not the propaganda published by unScientific American.
   
   I have not written that more CO2 will not warm the planet since I agree it will. The real issue is the rate of warming as a function of more CO2. There is still a considerable difference of opinion. Regarding sea level rise, the fact is that it is NOT rising at an alarming rate. About a foot of rise over 100 years is not considered a potential problem. Those who are promoting the fear and propaganda claim that sea level will rise by 1 to 2 meters by 2100, but the actual rate has been pretty steady since we have accurate measurements in 1992. There has been no significant increase in the rate of sea level rise over the last 20 years.

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7. 7. brandonkelton in reply to Sisko 02:56 PM 8/22/12

   Unconsidered:
   
   Higher densities of rock, etc. exist throughout the planet allowing the average sea-level rise to be constant, but certain areas having an increased level of rise proportional to the average rise around the globe.
   
   The higher the sea level rises, the faster erosion occurs. This is not a 1:1 ratio, but in increasing rate of erosion per single unit of sea level rise.
   
   The more fresh water there is on the surface of the ocean from glacier melt and river water emptying into oceans, the more intense storms become, leading to even faster erosion as well as potentially interfering in the global ocean circulation patterns.
   
   I find it extremely hard to believe sea level rise is remaining constant, considering the rate at which the Earth is warming. It seems only logical that as you heat a system, melt increases at a higher rate, thereby directly leading to an accelerating sea level rise.

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