OUTER BANKS COMMENTS DUE MAY 11!
RFA Members Asked to Send Letter to NPS For Deadline Extension
A Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) has been released by the National Park Service (NPS) with regard to off-road vehicle (ORV) use and protection of wildlife within Cape Hatteras National Seashore Recreational Area. Many surfcasters up and down the coast have been paying strict attention to this DEIS as the proposal threatens excessive beach closures on casters who use the beaches at Hatteras and Ocracoke Islands.

If you've been engaged in the battle to protect access rights and have read and submitted your comments with regard to this immense 810-page DEIS, thank you for your actions. However, if you're like many who are still trying to digest this encyclopedia of NPS legalese, there's something you can do to help! The 60-day comment period is coming to a close on Tuesday, May 11th, and recreational fishermen have been denied in their request to get a 30-day extension for comments.

Even more astounding is that the two U.S. Senators from North Carolina, Sen. Kay Hagan and Sen. Richard Burr, have also been denied their official request for a 30-day extension on behalf of recreational fishermen, which leaves us only a few more hours to make comments.

Members of the Recreational Fishing Alliance (RFA) are being asked to take up the cause and lobby the National Park Service respectfully for another 30 days to review and digest this DEIS. It took NPS Director Jonathan Jarvis and his staff a year to produce this 810-page document; by giving our community just 60 days to pore through the data and provide adequate comment is fairly irresponsible to the democratic process.

Secretary Jonathan Jarvis, director of the National Park Service in Washington DC, needs to have his fax machine loaded with response to let him know that our community is looking for help. You can help this coalition today by downloading copy of the letter at from the RFA homepage (www.joinrfa.org), fill in your personal information and fax it to the National Park Service at 202-208-7889.

Our allies in the fight have been denied a request for extension with little or no explanation. If NO is not answer you care to hear any longer from your state and federal agencies, remember there's power in numbers. Click here to download the document, print it out, fill it in, and fax it (respectfully) to the attention of Mr. Jarvis at the National Park Service before the deadline for comments runs out on May 11, 2010.