Chatham, MA Fights US Fish & Wildlife Service over Access to Traditional Town Fishing Grounds
SEAFOODNEWS.COM [Cape Cod Times] by Doug Fraser - March 31, 2015
With about two months to go before the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service issues its final management plan for the Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge, town and state officials are headed to Washington to meet with the state’s Congressional and Senate delegations to enlist their support.
“They (the Massachusetts delegation) are well aware that we are having a disagreement, but it’s important to put a punctuation mark on things we feel very strongly about,” Chatham Selectmen Chairman Sean Summers said.
The Monomoy refuge’s Comprehensive Conservation Plan is intended to manage the thousands of acres spread out over several islands just south of Chatham, as well as a part of Morris Island, for the next 15 years. The refuge was originally created in the 1940s to protect migratory shorebirds, which stop over on their way to and from summer nesting grounds, as well as those that nest on the islands.
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