For more than a century the Herring River, which flows through Cape Cod National Seashore, has struggled ecologically due to a dike built to keep mosquitoes from breeding in the surrounding salt water marsh. Now a collaborative effort is under way to restore the ecosystem.
Though you won't find any officially designated wilderness at Cape Cod National Seashore, some of the seascapes at Race Point seemingly could have been cut out of wilderness. Here the dunes and their scrub vegetation appear to have been untouched by human intrusions.
Mid-July travelers to Cape Cod National Seashore should consider attending the Highlands Fest: Reflections of the Coast, a festival that melds art, education, science, and volunteerism.
Summer's arrival and the height of the vacation season is filling the National Park System with folks and families looking to relax, kick back, and enjoy being together in fabulous settings. Let's just not forget to be safe out there, though.
A diminutive shorebird and a string of villages both dependent on the same necklace of barrier islands off the coast of North Carolina are being pinched in a precarious setting that demonstrates the folly of trying to control nature.
More controversy likely is in the offing for decisions affecting landscapes in the National Park System. One settles a long-standing dispute over religious symbols on public lands, the other wind farms.
Cape Cod National Seashore officials, who earlier this year were proposing to kill crows in an effort to protect piping plovers, are backing away from the plan due to the prospective of being sued over the matter. Instead the seashore will spend this year reviewing its shorebird management plan.
With negotiations on how best to handle the "Cape Wind" wind farm project proposed for Nantucket Sound apparently deadlocked, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has decided to make a decision on the project himself.
How far should national park managers go when it comes to wildlife management issues? That's a controversial issue in some circles, as evidenced by the concern being raised over a proposal at Cape Cod National Seashore to poison some crows that have developed a knack for preying on piping plovers, a threatened species along the Atlantic Seaboard under the Endangered Species Act, whose nests are seemingly protected by enclosures.