The Only 'Shoes' Needed in Our Closet on St John
A Major Addition to Virgin Islands Park
While Maho Bay Campgrounds has been closed and sold (to an individual) this past year, we are delighted that the beach and immediate surrounding lands will be forever green and protected from development thanks to the
:
Published by The New York Times, January 8, 2014 by Ashley Winchester
Paddleboarder Maho Bay St John
(Courtesy of M.K. Smith, NY Times)
Virgin Islands National Park – which already encompasses 60 percent of the tiny Caribbean island of St. John — just got a little bigger.
The beach at Maho Bay and its surrounding hillside recently was sold to the National Park Service in a $2.5 million deal, the Trust for Public Landannounced. It’s the park’s largest addition since 1956, when the philanthropist Laurance Rockefeller, hoping to preserve the island paradise he fell in love with, donated more than 5,000 acres toward its creation.
“It’s a story of perseverance and a vision,” Brion FitzGerald, the park superintendent, said. “To be able to sit on the beach and look up there and not see a lot of development is what makes it worthy of a national park. It ensures that same view for every generation to come.”
It’s hard to imagine a drive along the island’s North Shore Road, which winds through the parcel, without thinking of its iconic canopy.
But that nearly happened. The 74-acre sale is the final piece of a decades-long, 225-acre puzzle to discover the heirs to the estate, preserve it from deforestation and ultimately connect the eastern and western sections of the park. It’s seen as a victory for the island, which depends on its unspoiled reputation to entice tourists.
“It could have been up to 800 single-family homes, condominiums, timeshares that you just don’t want in the heart of a beautiful national park,” said John Garrison, the trust’s senior project manager.
This is a particularly interesting acquisition considering that the adjacent Maho Bay Campground, a pioneering eco-tourism hotel, was sold last year. It closed in May, leaving many locals worried as to what may become of that property.
“The camp was such an important part of the overall economy of St. John,” Mr. Garrison said. “But I don’t think it will be developed in any way that will be detrimental to the park.”
The national park draws more than 600,000 visitors a year in search of its soft, white-sand beaches, trails through unspoiled jungle, and historic sugar mill plantation ruins.
Mr. FitzGerald said rangers are already working with Friends of the National Park in clearing the property’s Maria Hope Trail and improving parking at the beach.
Virgin Islands National Park Waters Now a 'No Anchor' Zone
Joe Kessler, President of the Friends of Virgin Islands National Park recently wrote the following article in the NPCA Park Advocate which we hope you enjoy (our nesting turtles and other sea creatures who feed in our sea grasses and coral definitely support the 'no anchor' initiative!):
Imagine boating to paradise and then—without meaning to—causing it harm. Thanks to more than a decade of work in the Virgin Islands, a national park visit by boat is now gentler on the marine environment.
The spectacular coastal scenery, crystal clear waters, reliable winds, and beautiful bays of Virgin Islands National Park and the Virgin Islands Coral Reef National Monument have made them popular destinations for boaters. In the past, these visitors had to use anchors to secure their vessels, causing considerable, albeit unintentional, damage to sea grass beds, coral reefs, and other benthic (seabed or seafloor) resources. To combat this problem, the park embarked on a mooring program to provide a safe and reliable alternative to anchoring with the long-term goal of creating an anchorless park.
Moorings are permanent installations that allow boats to stay in one place without using anchors. In our case we drive heavy-duty augur-like devices about 15 feet into the seabed and then connect a line to a buoy on the surface (see a diagram of how this works). Boats attach to the buoy and are secure. Anchors are a more temporary solution, disturbing the seabed every time they are dropped and then retrieved. Just imagine the damage that could be done by 50 boats dropping anchors and then pulling them up day after day.
Park leadership and the Friends of Virgin Islands National Park finally achieved our long-held goal of an anchorless park in February 2013. Since the beginning of the program, the Friends group has installed 340 moorings and invested more than $663,000 in this program.
Starting back in 1999, the Friends installed 180 moorings for overnight use in ten bays around St. John. These white mooring balls along the north and south shores of St. John have played a significant role in protecting coral reefs, allowing the recovery of sea grass and protecting other benthic resources. The sea grass beds had been seriously depleted due to anchoring, but now if you snorkel in the mooring fields you will see a rich carpet of sea grass–much to the delight (and survival) of the myriad of marine creatures that make the sea grass their home.
In 2004, the Friends embarked on a program to install moorings in the recently designated Coral Reef National Monument. As a marine protected area, anchoring was prohibited within the monument. But, while we supported the conservation policies of the monument, we felt that the prohibition on anchoring precluded many of the traditional uses of the monument’s waters. Installing moorings was the perfect answer and a “win-win” for both the users and the environment: allowing users to continue to enjoy this unique marine environment while providing needed protection to the natural resources. In this case, the Friends installed two dive moorings at popular dive sites in the monument, six moorings for blue runner fishing, and 125 storm-mooring berths and 11 day-use moorings in Hurricane Hole, a traditional refuge here for vessels during tropical storms. These moorings were installed in four phases between 2004 and 2008.
All of the moorings mentioned above were for boats up to a maximum of 60 feet in length. Vessels larger than that still had to anchor. Earlier this year, we installed 14 moorings for boats between 60 and 100 feet in six bays, finally making the park anchorless.
The protection of the park’s marine resources was obviously the principal objective of the mooring installations. However, the moorings also have a significant impact on the visiting boaters’ experience by providing a safe and convenient means of securing their boats while enjoying Virgin Islands National Park and the Coral Reef National Monument.
The National Park Service has published a 'moorings guide' for St John. Positive effects of the mooring program have been quick to see, Kessler said. “In 12 to 13 years, we’ve seen the re-growth of a rich carpet of seagrass and, as a result, a significant increase in the sea turtle population.”
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| The turtles and other sea creatures benefit by the 'no anchor' policy |