Fire Island National Seashore Named 'Endangered National Park'

FIRE ISLAND, NY—A nonprofit group that tracks environmental threats to national parks across America has added Fire Island National Seashore to their annual list of "Threatened and Endangered Parks."

National Parks Traveler is an independent media organization that covers topics related to national parks. They publish an annual list of threatened parks and in December explored the risks that climate change and sea level rise pose to Long Island's barrier island park.

Fire Island National Seashore is a federally-protected 26-mile section of Fire Island, publicly maintained as a national seashore. National Parks Traveler points to both the popularity of the park, with high numbers of annual visitors, and climate change leading to rising waters as threats to the park's future.

"By 2050, the park’s headquarters and the ferry terminal in Patchogue, the Fire Island Light Station built in 1858 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and marina infrastructure are expected to be highly vulnerable, and the Sunken Forest could disappear. The only roadway running the length of the park, Burma Road, is used for emergencies and utilities only; it’s likely to breach by 2050," the report stated.

Managing existing homes and coastlines with sand replenishment is a controversial approach, as experts point to the fact that barrier islands naturally migrate over time, and rising sea levels will only compound the problem.

"Sand taken from the ocean floor is now added to Fire Island beaches every five years, and replenishment may have to happen more frequently," Cheryl Hapke, Ph.D., who worked for the U.S. Geological Survey as a research geologist studying coastal processes and vulnerability at Fire Island., explained.

Almost 2.5 million people visit Fire Island every year.