FINS Sees GMP as “Shared Stewardship”
By Tara Lamberti

With so many groups designated to benefit the wildlife, preserve the beaches and govern each community, acronyms flow on Fire Island like an episode of ER. This summer one more is going to be reintroduced to the masses. On the tips of tongues everywhere you will be hearing three very important letters: GMP. But what do they mean?

GMP stands for General Management Plan, and it is essential to the future of Fire Island as a national park. Every 20 to 30 years an assessment of the island is conducted by the National Seashore which will pave the way for the next course of action for the following three decades. Superintendent of the Fire Island National Seashore (FINS), Mike Reynolds, graciously explained what the GMP means both professionally and personally.

In simple terms Reynolds defines a General Management Plan as “a blueprint for how we manage, deal with change, preserve and protect a public resource and how visitors interact with it. It has a vision and specific action statements which will determine where a facility is or will be.”

A team of scientists prepared papers summarizing the current status of the island and its needs. Although the documents target particular problems that need to be addressed, (deer management, vector-borne diseases, geomorphology of beaches and dunes, habitat ecology and water quality of the Great South Bay and physical process of the bay shoreline), Reynolds stressed what was of utmost importance at this stage in the game, community contribution.

Reynolds believes that the island belongs to everyone and its management should be a joint effort. If a person wants to preserve something that they love, respect and treasure, they are going to want to get as many people involved as possible.

“We can’t do this alone,” he said. “When we do, it isn’t as successful. This is about Fire Island’s future and a theme I’d like to offer up is shared stewardship.”

Get Ready to Be Heard

The public should anticipate a lot of opportunities in the next six to nine months to have their voices heard. The way Reynolds plans to reach out to the communities is through scoping, a series of meetings where the public is asked to listen to the proposed plans and offer up some of their own ideas. According to Reynolds, the public’s responses will be “very instructive” for the teams working to construct the GMP.

At present, there are scoping dates set for August 11 at Watch Hill and Sailors Haven, August 12 at Cherry Grove and Fire Island Pines and August 13 at Saltaire and Ocean Beach. September meetings bring the discussions to the mainland on the 25th at Islip Town Hall, Brookhaven Town Hall on the 26th and Mastic Beach on September 27th.

Through this project Reynolds hopes to forge new relationships between the towns of Islip and Brookhaven while working together on this plan. Finalizing the new approach is very time consuming. He estimated its completion to be around 2009 or 2010. In the interim, many different options will be considered.

What sets Fire Island apart from most national parks is its unique blend of wilderness and communities. There are so many diverse cultures and creatures from one end of the island to the other that all possible outlooks must be considered. Reynolds referred to Fire Island as a “great model of conservation.” In an effort to keep it that way FINS is reaching out.

For more information on the General Management Plan or the Fire Island National Seashore you can visit them online at www.nps.gov/fiis. Stay tuned to The News for more information regarding when and where the scoping meetings will be held.