Great Pointers cautiously optimistic on beach conservation plan
BY PETER B. BRACE INDEPENDENT WRITER

PHOTO BY PETER B. BRACE Great Point is not just for fishing. It has amazing light, beach driving, sand, sunsets and infinite lighthouse views.

Long-time island fisherman Kenny Kassan is confident that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's comprehensive management plan for its 24-acre refuge on Great Point will allow for continued access to the northeast tip of Nantucket.

Nearly 25 bird watchers, beach users and fishermen attended a public information session on Oct. 15 held by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to defend their fishing grounds and beaches and learned that the federal Fish & Wildlife Service's attitude is one of shared uses.

"I'm not too concerned about what they intend to do, I don't think they're looking to lock it up," said Kassan. "What they say is they're going to get public input now, they're going to write a preliminary plan and they'll present it next year and then they'll get more input, tune it up and the year after that, they'll be back to discuss the finalization of it. So I think they mean to work with the people of Nantucket."

The USFW's Comprehensive Conservation Plan for the Nantucket National Wildlife Refuge is mandated by the National Wildlife Refuge Improvement Act of 1997, which stipulates that all federal wildlife refuges must create a comprehensive conservation plan by 2012 with management goals and objectives good for 15 years. These plans are aimed at protecting plants, wildlife and habitat, specifically for Great Point, piping plovers, least terns and other shorebirds, seals, beach vegetation and the barrier beach ecosystem while allowing continued public use.

Although USFW's refuge is only a small part of the Trustees of Reservations' 987-acre Coskata-Coatue Wildlife Refuge property that includes Great Point, which the Trustees already manages and protects along with its own property, the federal government's plan must still be developed regardless of the Trustees' existing management plan, said Carl Melberg, Refuge Planner for the Eastern Massachusetts National Refuge Complex in Sudbury, Mass.

Last Wednesday's format for opening the USFW planning process served to diffuse what could have been a confrontational meeting of federal government staffers fielding questions and comments from angry sportsmen.

While fishermen and others worked their way around the conference room in the Town Annex building reading informational posters on how the comprehensive conservation plan process works, looking at maps of Great Point showing the USFW's property and checking lists of plan objectives and possible uses for this refuge, USFW personnel answered questions and explained the process further.

Pam Lohman and her husband Chris own the only two cottages on Great Point, built in the late 1950's on 10 acres of land.

"I think this afternoon they got a lot of comments about what a good job the Trustees are doing and I hope they listen to the people saying 'do the right balance between protecting wildlife and public access and letting people enjoy the place too,'" Lohman said.

With these comments and written ones people are expected to send in, USFW will then produce a first draft of their plan, bring it back to Nantucket next summer for a public hearing and fine-tune it with comments from that meeting from Great Point denizens like Kassan.

"The majority of the people that use that point look at it much the same that I do; it's a spiritual thing," he said. "I mean, I don't have to go to Colorado to see it raining fire in the sky, I can watch the meteor showers up on Great Point. I've seen triple rainbows, I've seen the sun set in the west and the instant it disappears the moon comes up in the east and where can you see that? You ever see a meteor skip across the atmosphere? I have, on Great Point. Have you ever watched a grandchild catch its first bluefish? I saw it. I have other grandchildren coming up and I want them to be able to do the same thing." I