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mizing potential conflicts.
n It provides for the removal of substandard cabins and replaces them with more modern structures that would be better maintained then are the current cabins.
n It offers the shortest and safest hurricane evacuation route.
n It maintains the camp in the center of the island, which is the most convenient location for surf fishermen.
n It maintains the traditional ferry service from Davis to Great Island, eliminating the need for expensive and environmentally damaging dredging.
But we recommend that Alternative 3 be amended to ensure the preservation of the cultural and historic qualities of the Great Island Camp, values that are ignored in the current draft amendments. The existing cabins are the last remnants of a 60-year history of surf fishing on the N.C. coast. It's an enduring story that includes the likes of Babe Ruth, who used a mule-driven sled to fish the island in the 1930s for speckled trout. Generations of less illustrious fishermen rented cabins at what is now the Great Island Camp from colorful characters such as Sterling Dixon, "Hamp" Hampton, Carley and Alger Willis. Now, the sons and daughters of those fishermen return each year.
Before you make your decision on the preferred alternative, we suggest you talk to people like Mark Weir or Wayne Stafford, two DIFF Club members who have been going to the island since they were youngsters. Listen to the stories they tell about their daddies, about the bogged-down Model As they pushed through the sand, about nights spent in the cabins listening to the adults swap fishing yarns. To Mark, Wayne and hundreds of people like them, Davis Island and those ramshackle huts are intimate parts of their lives. Like salmon returning to the place of their birth, they are drawn back to the island each year. They come not so much to fish but to connect with their past.
A history that personal, that immediate, that meaningful is worth preserving. Therefore, the DIFF Club recommends that Alter

DIFF still opposes any development on south end

The DIFF Club Board of Directors sent the following letter Oct. 15 to the National Park Service concerning the proposed amendments to the management plan for Capoe Lookout National Seashore.

The Board of Directors of the Davis Island Fishing Foundation (DIFF Club) voted unanimously at its last meeting Sept. 26 to support a revised  Alternative 3 in the National Park Service's latest draft amendments for the management plan for Cape Lookout National Seashore.
As we stated in our July 30th letter on this matter, DIFF's 225 members are regular users of Davis Island, known as South Core Banks in the management plan. We consider the island to be one of the jewels of the East Coast, one of the few remaining unspoiled beaches in the country. We firmly believe that the Park Service should do nothing that would change the island's ruggedness or harm its environment or natural beauty by overtaxing its resources.
For those reasons, we remain opposed to what are now alternatives 1 and 2. Neither, we believe, can be done without drastically changing the island's qualities or irreparably damaging its environment.
Alternative 3 is the most appealing of the current options under consideration for the following reasons:
n It has the least impact on the environment because it maintains the Great Island camp at its existing site, an already disturbed area.
n It maintains the separation between the two major user groups -- overnight surf fishermen and daytime bathers, picnickers and sunbathers -- thus mini

A history that personal, that immediate, that meaningful is worth preserving.

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