The National Park Service has launched an Adopt-a-Beach program and is seeking volunteers to help keep Cape Hatteras National Seashore’s 75 miles of shoreline clean. The seashore is offering 18 sections of beach for adoption, focusing on the year-round, off-road vehicle routes north of Oregon Inlet and on Hatteras and Ocracoke islands, the park service said in a news release. Each section is about two miles long.
To adopt a section of beach, a group must commit to completing four cleanups each year and meet all volunteer reporting requirements, the release said. The park service will provide training and supplies. After the first cleanup, the park service will add a sign at the entry point of the group’s adopted beach.
The park service partnered with the North Carolina Beach Buggy Association to help create the program, saying the group “provided valuable insight from their decades-long Operation Beach Respect program,” an annual cleanup and education effort at beach accesses and four-wheel drive ramps. The Beach Buggy Association is the first participant under the new park service program, adopting a beach section at Ramp 23 in Salvo. The idea is not new to the Outer Banks.
On the area’s northern beaches, Surfrider Outer Banks has managed a similar adopt-a-beach program for years. “So many local families and businesses already provide exceptional support to the seashore by helping to steward our beaches,” said National Parks of Eastern North Carolina Superinten.
