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Piping Plover

    THREATENED

    Beach Access Limited When Plovers Nest Near Trails

    The trail from Snail Road leads to a barrier that protects vulnerable nests

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — Mildred Champlin remembers a time when piping plover chicks were in constant danger of being run over by cars on Race Point Beach. She has spent every summer since 1957 at the dune shack she calls Mission Bell, and she recalls guides from Art’s Dune Tours planting sticks in the sand to mark the birds’ tiny nests so that drivers wouldn’t accidentally squash them.

    Michelle Chambers of Truro and friend Patty Jacobsen take in the view from the end of the trail that begins at Route 6 and Snail Road. The posts and strings mark a section of beach that is closed to people and vehicles to protect nesting plovers, which are threatened on the Atlantic coast. (Photo by Kiran Johnson)

    The federal Endangered Species Act has been the law since 1973, and rangers in the Cape Cod National Seashore are now in charge of marking plover nests as well as installing temporary posts and strings along the beach to warn hikers and drivers to keep their distance.

    This season, the barriers have included one that blocks a popular hiking trail that runs from the intersection of Route 6 and Snail Road out to the ocean. At the beginning of the trail, a sign warns there is no beach access, and at the trail’s end there is a string fence and a group of signs.

    “Beach access from this trail temporarily closed,” says one. “No vehicles, no dogs, no entry,” says another. “These rare birds, their nests and eggs are protected.”

    The Atlantic coast population of piping plovers was listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act in December 1985. (The Great Lakes population was listed as endangered that year, while the Great Plains population was also listed as threatened.)

    A 1986 census found only 170 breeding pairs in Massachusetts. Last year’s census found 1,178 breeding pairs in the state, however, with half of them on Cape Cod. There were 64 breeding pairs in Provincetown and 41 in Truro, according to that count — almost 9 percent of the state’s total.

    Behind the posts, strings, and signs warning hikers to keep out, a plover nest under a protective cage installed by National Park rangers is visible. (Photo by Kiran Johnson)

    Geoffrey Sanders, chief of natural resource management and science at the Cape Cod National Seashore, said that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service sets guidelines for buffer areas around plover nests, and the Park Service is in charge of implementing them.

    Disturbances from humans, cars, or dogs can cause plover parents to be flushed from their nests. They’ll do a “broken wing display,” Sanders said, to draw predators away from their eggs and chicks.

    “When they’re flushing the nest, they’re no longer incubating or protecting eggs or chicks,” Sanders said. One reason that birds sit on their eggs is to keep them at a constant temperature; if the sun overheats unprotected eggs, it can harm them.

    The Park Service, using “flexible management,” can reduce the buffer zone to allow more access on the six official National Seashore beaches: Race Point, Herring Cove, Head of the Meadow, Marconi, Nauset Light, and Coast Guard. “Instead of requiring a 50-meter buffer, we can reduce it to close to 10 meters” at those beaches, Sanders said.

    The stretch of Race Point Beach where the hiking trail reaches the ocean is not one of the six designated beaches, however.

    “The law requires a certain amount of buffer distance away from the nest, and if we can’t achieve that, we close those areas,” Sanders said.

    Reaching the Beach

    A Chatham resident who was selected by lottery for a weeklong stay at the Euphoria dune shack this June said that, because beach access was blocked near the shack, he walked about a mile and a half down the dune taxi trail to reach the ocean.

    “I can’t even tell you where there’s another access point, because it’s pretty far from us,” said Marianne Benson, who has spent summers in the dune shack she calls “the Grail” with her husband, Peter Clemons, since 1974.

    The National Seashore maintains a list of public closures on its website, but it does not tell dune shack dwellers or lottery winners where the nearest access points are to their shacks.

    Rangers installing post-and-string barriers on the beach near the Mission Bell dune shack in April. (Photo by Paul Benson)

    “We understand the necessity to protect wildlife,” said Laurie Schecter, who was first granted a lease for the Peg Watson dune shack in 1993. Nonetheless, losing beach access has a cultural cost, she said, since the shacks are places of solitude while the beach was a place for socializing.

    The National Seashore’s shorebird crew tries to be conscious of the dune shacks, Sanders said.

    “They recognize that people at the shacks are going to want to get on the beach,” he said. “That’s part of the beauty of being out there. They work really hard to find a way to create a spot for them.”

    Benson said she regularly sees tourists wandering off-trail to find an open route to the beach, despite the sign at the beginning of the trail that warns hikers that beach access is “temporarily closed.”

    Visitors follow footprints or walk the off-road vehicle route for an extra mile and a half, as the Euphoria shack’s recent visitor did.

    On July 3, the Park Service issued a press release seeking information about multiple incidents of vandalism in which the phrase “Bird Nazis” was spray-painted on road signs and an off-road vehicle.

    Photos from the National Seashore’s press release show the vandalism of Park Service property in June. (Photo courtesy National Park Service)

    According to the press release, the incidents took place between June 15 and July 3 near Herring Cove Beach and the Wood End Marsh bicycle rack in Provincetown’s West End.

    The episode was unusual for many reasons — including that anti-plover messages, once a common feature on bumper stickers on Cape Cod, largely disappeared more than a decade ago.

    Despite their concerns about beach access, the residents and dune dwellers who spoke to the Independent largely affirmed the importance of plover conservation and the Park Service’s approach to the job.

    “In general, their job is to care for nature,” said Schecter, “and if they feel like this is the best way to do it, I’ll support them.”

    PLOVER PLIGHT

    It’s Been a Record Year for Piping Plovers

    The ‘cultural norm’ and the numbers have shifted on a threatened shorebird

    By

    WELLFLEET — Nearly 40 years ago the plump, sand-colored shorebird known as the piping plover was on the verge of extinction in Massachusetts. Now, following decades of conservation, the birds have had their best year on record — 1,145 pairs nested in Massachusetts this summer, according to a Nov. 14 Mass Audubon report on data compiled by the state Div. of Fisheries and Wildlife.

    Adorable, controversial, and threatened, piping plovers are becoming more common on Massachusetts beaches. (Photo by Don Freiday/USFWS)

    Cape Cod is an “incredibly important” part of the piping plovers’ success story, according to Lyra Brennan, director of Mass Audubon’s coastal waterbird program, which monitors the plovers on public and private beaches around the state. The Cape hosts the largest concentration of these birds in Massachusetts, a fact she attributes to its “pristine” habitat.

    The numbers show that plover conservation efforts “have been really, really effective,” said Brennan. “I think we’ve got a winning formula right now.”
    The 2023 numbers represent a 500-percent increase in piping plover populations in the state since 1986, when the species was listed as threatened by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Over half of the bird’s population on the Atlantic coast currently breeds in Massachusetts.

    This year’s surveys found piping plovers breeding in all four towns on the Outer Cape.

    The plovers are not yet in the clear, however. The species as a whole is still listed as threatened. The Great Lakes population is considered endangered, while the Great Plains and Atlantic populations are threatened.

    The Long Road to Recovery

    Piping plovers are beachgoing birds, and they nest on the sand between the dunes and the high tide line — a habitat that is also popular with people. It’s “right where you want to put your beach chair,” Brennan said.

    Coastal development and human disturbance — cars, off-leash dogs, and crowded beaches — caused this bird’s population to plummet over the course of the 20th century. “If you think about hundreds of nests out on the beach with no protection, you can guess what would happen to them if there’s lots of unregulated activities,” Brennan said.

    By 1986, only about 135 pairs were left in Massachusetts, and the birds received federal protection as a threatened species. That same year, Mass Audubon began its coastal waterbird program to monitor and protect beach-nesting birds like piping plovers.

    Each year, Mass Audubon hires between 35 and 45 seasonal staff to walk and drive Massachusetts beaches looking for plover nests. Nests are monitored until chicks emerge from the eggs. Staffers then track these young until they have fledged. They also construct rope fences around nesting areas to discourage people from approaching.

    Mass Audubon monitors about a third of the piping plover population, including on the bay side in Wellfleet, Truro, and Eastham. The National Park Service oversees the monitoring program on Seashore property. Elsewhere in the state, the Dept. of Conservation and Recreation, the Trustees of Reservations, and towns like Sandwich run their own monitoring programs as well.

    The data these groups collect are crucial, Brennan said. “Every beach is so different,” she said, so it is vital to understand how the birds are recovering in different locations.

    By comparing this information with data on habitat, predators, and human interference at each site, scientists can find commonalities among productive or unproductive beaches — data used by legislators and landowners to design management plans.

    The plovers need a buffer zone around them when they are nesting, which means keeping people out of rather large portions of the beach for much of the plovers’ breeding season, which extends from late April through early September. And as populations have improved, protected areas have been enlarged to accommodate them.

    Oversand vehicles are also restricted from accessing many Cape beaches during plover nesting season, especially during June and July. Vehicles are not permitted to pass within 100 feet of nests and chicks. The National Park Service, which manages an ORV corridor from Herring Cove Beach in Provincetown to Long Nook in Truro, notes that changes in access rules can occur without warning.

    Management decisions like these provoke grumbling from some beachgoers. The comments under online articles about beach closures are dominated by complaints about government overreach and loss of access to favorite beaches. But the bumper stickers reading “Piping plovers taste like chicken,” which became a slogan of defiance against the protections a decade ago, are seen less often now.

    Mass Audubon spends a lot of time educating the public about the plovers, Brennan said. Her organization’s monitoring staff are trained on how to talk with curious beachgoers about the birds. Back when the program was first introduced, Brennan said, the frustration among locals and tourists was palpable. Now, she said, the Mass Audubon coastal waterbird crew tracks interactions with beachgoers, and their data suggest an “overwhelmingly positive response.”

    “There are still conflicts and really difficult conversations that need to be had,” Brennan said, to reach agreements that preserve both the plovers and people’s beach days.

    While some people still resent the bird, Brennan said, she feels the “cultural norm has shifted to some extent. Simple things that everyone is doing are a part of the reason that the birds are succeeding.”

    Other Avian Victories

    While piping plovers were the stars of Mass Audubon’s report, it included good news for other waterbirds as well. American oystercatchers, huge, clownish birds with giant red bills, also had their best year ever, with 238 pairs breeding statewide — a 12-percent jump from last year’s numbers — including a few pairs in Wellfleet.

    Least terns, tiny, gull-like birds that the Audubon program also monitors, experienced a slight decline from their 2022 numbers in the state, dropping from 3,691 to 3,565 pairs. Brennan noted, however, that least tern populations in Massachusetts are healthy, and regular fluctuations are normal.

    BUGGIES & BIRDS

    On ‘the Outer,’ Piping Plover Protection Is Working

    From Nauset Beach to Race Point, shorebird programs balance over-sand vehicle access

    By

    ORLEANS — From the sandy bank of Pochet Creek emerge two small piping plover chicks. Their fuzzy plumage serves as camouflage against the sand, making it nearly impossible to spot them as they dart across the wash. Their orange legs move in a blur, then pause in a tuft of beach grass. They are 18 days old and have yet to fledge. They are foraging, unaware of the parade of vehicles just beyond the phragmites that conceal this stretch of sand.

    BUGGIES & BIRDS

    On ‘the Outer,’ Piping Plover Protection Is Working

    From Nauset Beach to Race Point, shorebird programs balance over-sand vehicle access

    By

    ORLEANS — From the sandy bank of Pochet Creek emerge two small piping plover chicks. Their fuzzy plumage serves as camouflage against the sand, making it nearly impossible to spot them as they dart across the wash. Their orange legs move in a blur, then pause in a tuft of beach grass. They are 18 days old and have yet to fledge. They are foraging, unaware of the parade of vehicles just beyond the phragmites that conceal this stretch of sand.

    The procession of cars snakes along slowly. Fifteen feet ahead of each vehicle walks a passenger, leading a car through the “self-escort” zone of Nauset Beach South’s over-sand vehicle (OSV) trail.

    A beachgoer escorts her camper van on Nauset Beach South’s OSV trail, eyes scanning the wash for the fuzzy plumage of unfledged plovers. What state and Seashore conservation efforts look like and how they’re working. (Photo by Isabelle Nobili)

    Though passengers are told to scan the tire tracks for piping plovers as they walk, most have never seen the unfledged chicks that forage in the creek beside them.

    The OSV trail opened with limited access on July 27 this year. Due to the presence of unfledged chicks, some restrictions are dictated by the state’s Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP). Enforced by the Orleans Dept. of Natural Resources, the plan allows recreational OSV access on Nauset Beach while protecting the piping plovers in their habitat.

    Under both the U.S. and Mass. endangered species acts, the piping plover is listed as threatened. The global population of piping plovers is fewer than 10,000; in Massachusetts, only 700 breeding pairs remain. The HCP, adopted in 2016, seems to be helping. In 1986, there were only 140 pairs left in the state.

    Prepared by the Mass. Div. of Fisheries and Wildlife (DMF), the HCP aims to balance conservation and beach access. As part of the plan, the DMF and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) issued a certificate of inclusion that allows Orleans to apply the HCP to Nauset Beach.

    With that certificate, the plan permits the passage of up to 180 OSVs per day through the Pochet wash area — as long as no more than eight unfledged piping plover chicks and four adults are present.

    An unfledged piping plover chick pauses in the sand at Riley Wash on Nauset Beach South. (Photos by Isabelle Nobili)

    Before the implementation of the plan, OSVs were simply prohibited whenever unfledged chicks were present.

    “I think the key word here is balance,” says Keegan Burke, natural resource officer and shorebird specialist for the town. The balance is between monitoring and protecting the shorebirds and allowing people access to the outer beach.

    The OSV community, eager each summer to enjoy “the Outer,” took advantage of the South Side’s opening. Capacity for OSVs was reached both days of the first weekend, according to Burke.

    “The word was out,” says Burke. “Overall, it was a success.”

    Access to the OSV South trail is currently limited to three two-hour windows, and the self-escorting procedure is in place for a designated stretch of trail that precedes Riley Wash and Trail 1 access.

    Madaket Nobili, a member of the Orleans Dept. of Natural Resources shorebird monitoring staff, keeps watch over the piping plover brood on Nauset Beach South.

    Ten natural resource staff members, along with Burke and two assistants, enforce the HCP and ensure that the unfledged piping plover chicks remain protected while OSV recreation resumes.

    Behind the scenes, at least one member of the HCP staff is constantly monitoring the brood of unfledged chicks throughout the day. The piping plover is a precocial species, meaning that it can feed itself within a few hours of leaving the nest. Highly mobile, it forages on both sides of the OSV trail, often crossing the corridor in search of food.

    It is the job of the HCP staff to ensure that whenever a crossing occurs, the plover chick is safe from vehicles. Specific access windows help limit the threat, but the chicks are fast and unpredictable, so the monitoring is nonstop.

    “The fencing, keeping track of the plovers, and having regulations on dogs and vehicles,” says Burke. “There’s no question it works. The plovers are doing well.”

    This year, Burke and natural resources staff recorded more than 40 breeding pairs of piping plovers on Nauset Beach. “Numbers are slowly increasing,” Burke says. Six to eight years ago, he says, there were only 20.

    Piping plover monitoring and preparation begins in early March when the staff starts to install fencing and signage. The plovers arrive in April and begin to form nests and lay eggs in May.

    At that point, “Our day-to-day routine is walking the beach and monitoring pairs, identifying where their territories are, and staying on top of their egg-laying cycle,” says Burke. “We keep track of their incubation period, so we know exactly when they start to lay and exactly when they’ll hatch.”

    As chicks hatch in June, Burke and his team must count chicks and keep close tabs on every brood. “Then starts that countdown to when we can start talking about opening sections of the beach up for OSV passage,” says Burke.

    “It sounds simple, in a sense, but when you have seven or eight miles of beach and over 40 pairs of plovers, it’s a lot,” says Burke.

    National Seashore Rules

    The National Seashore has its own rules for over-sand vehicles — the Park calls them off-road vehicles or ORVs.

    In the Seashore, access is possible along 10.5 miles of shoreline, from Head of the Meadow Beach in Truro to Race Point Beach in Provincetown. An extensive shorebird monitoring program is in place for this section of the Cape, but there is no HCP.

    On Aug. 6, the Seashore opened a 0.8-mile section of the ORV corridor, but the rest of the corridor has remained closed since the beginning of the hatching season.

    A fresh set of ORV tracks on Race Point Beach during the off season.

    “The biggest distinction between Nauset Beach and the National Seashore is that we are operating under a federal negotiated rule for our ORV corridor,” says Seashore Supt. Brian Carlstrom. The rule dates to 1998 and involved 22 agencies, organizations, and interest groups, according to the 2020 ORV Annual Report.

    In the Park, sales are limited to 400 active seven-day permits and 3,000 annual permits. The rule sets boundaries for ORV corridors and leaves open the possibility that some or all of the corridors will be closed for periods.

    While the Seashore has considered implementing an HCP to allow earlier ORV access to beaches, Carlstrom says such a program would not be realistic.

    The issue is staffing. “Operationally, that type of a program is so labor-intensive that it’s really not feasible,” he says.

    In 2018, however, the Seashore completed a shorebird management plan that gave the Park more discretion. In June, for example, one access point was kept open even though a plover nest was located nearby.

    A Seashore team keeps track of plover activity. “We have our biological technicians and interns out there on a daily basis covering different areas of the Seashore,” says Carlstrom. They know where plover nests are, set up fencing, and track predation events.

    Sometimes, says Carlstrom, the bird conditions might be right, but slope erosion and changing terrain makes limiting ORV access necessary.

    “ORVing is a part of the Outer Cape experience that predates the Seashore,” says Carlstrom. As with the Orleans plan, balance is the goal. “We do everything we can to provide as much access as possible, while trying to make sure that birds are as protected as they can be,” he says.

    Over time, the Seashore has seen a promising increase in breeding pairs of plovers, just as the Orleans Dept. of Natural Resources has. In 2020, there were 92 breeding pairs in the Seashore and 171 fledged chicks recorded.

    “Without the level of protection and work that we do, we would not be seeing the improving numbers of plovers that we have had,” Carlstrom says. “This work is imperative.”

    CANNABUSINESS

    Dispensary Owners Now Seek to Build Grow Facility in Truro

    The canopy space is 10 times as large as in earlier plan

    By

    TRURO — The owners of cannabis dispensaries in Eastham and Wellfleet plan to build a 9,600-square-foot building to grow and manufacture marijuana products off Route 6 in North Truro, an update to an earlier proposal that would significantly expand their production space.

    The proposal is a joint venture by Zachary Ment, owner of the Piping Plover in Wellfleet, and Harlen Howard and Jonah Turner, co-owners of Salty Farmers in North Eastham. Ment, Howard, and Turner had asked earlier this year to use a 960-square-foot building at 1 Noons Heights Road to grow marijuana for their businesses.

    Ment and Howard presented the expanded proposal to the Truro Select Board on July 13.

    The new structure would likely have a canopy — the area used for growing plants — of about 1,000 square feet, though plans are not yet final, Ment told the Independent. That’s about 10 times as much cultivation space as was in the original proposal. Ment said about half of the building will be used for cultivation.

    In spite of the scale of the expansion, Ment said that “the Hatchery,” as the facility is tentatively named, will still be considered a “tier 1” cultivation facility, that is, the smallest possible class, in the eyes of the state Cannabis Control Commission (CCC). But specifics of the building size have “a huge margin of error” he added, because the plan is in its early stages.

    The property at 1 Noons Heights Road is currently owned by Michael F. Winkler of Truro, according to the assessor’s database, and includes 4.43 acres of land and three existing buildings: a 960-square-foot office building, a 1,464-square-foot wood-frame storage garage, and a 6,600-square-foot metal-frame storage garage. The property is valued at $1,010,800.

    Ment told the Independent that the dispensary owners had reached an agreement with Winkler to build the new structure on the property, which Winkler confirmed.

    Winkler currently operates a crane service out of the Noons Heights Road property, and he said he will continue to do so once the Hatchery is up and running.

    “Not much has happened yet,” said Winkler. “All this stuff is preliminary.”

    The dispensary owners have been negotiating with the town since March over a host community agreement (HCA) — the state-mandated arrangement between a marijuana business and the town government where it is to be located.

    The increase in the size of the building, said Ment, came about during those negotiations.

    It’s an outcome that “seemed to both parties like a viable option,” he said, but he would not explain why the town sees a larger facility as advantageous, because, he said, those negotiations are still ongoing.

    Production at the facility will be limited to products to stock the two stores, Piping Plover and Salty Farmers, Ment said, to give them a competitive advantage. While he is unsure exactly what they will make, he anticipates the products will include edibles.

    “The idea is we want things from beginning to end,” Howard said at the meeting.

    If it is approved, the business will have the only licenses available in Truro for marijuana cultivation and for manufacturing — the two licenses are separate, as required by state rules. That limit on licenses available in Truro was approved by voters at a special town meeting in 2018.

    The High Dune Craft Cooperative, a group of farmers who were recently approved for a provisional license to grow marijuana at five farms, is the only other cannabis business in Truro. They have a different type of license, intended for small farmers, called a craft marijuana cultivator cooperative license, and are currently in the process of preparing a site plan review application for the Truro Planning Board, said Michael Fee, a Boston-based lawyer who is representing the cooperative during the application process.

    The new scope of the Hatchery proposal means the timeline for the project is longer than at first anticipated. Most of the additional time will come from building an entirely new structure, which was not in the original proposal. “It’s not easy to get anything built,” Ment said.

    Ment’s and Howard’s presentation to the select board featured a rendering of what the building could look like: a steel-frame structure with solar panels on the roof. Ment said the details are likely to change after incorporating more input from community members and town officials.

    But the additional challenges of building a new facility should pay dividends, at least according to the owners’ projections. The updated financial forecast they presented to the select board projected nearly $1.4 million in revenue in FY2023 and $2.5 million in FY2024, more than doubling the predicted revenue for the original proposal.

    As with retail business, the host community agreement for this type of facility could call for a “community impact fee.” Select board vice chair Kristen Reed said that is in the cards, though the details of how it would work remain to be negotiated.

    Depending on the fee percentage in the agreement (which is capped at 3 percent and can be imposed for no more than five years) and the accuracy of financial projections, the town could collect an estimated $41,000 in FY 2023 and $75,000 in FY 2024 from this facility.

    Massachusetts law requires marijuana operations have sufficient security measures to prevent unauthorized entrance. The Hatchery will not be open to the public and will have a security plan approved by Truro police, Howard and Ment told the select board. They also said the facility will be equipped with “surveillance cameras, perimeter alarm, and electronic access controls,” and that only authorized personnel will be allowed on the premises, and the building will be locked at all times.

    Before the presentation began, board chair Bob Weinstein commended the “thoroughness and clarity” of Ment’s and Howard’s presentation slides.

    Reed and Town Manager Darrin Tangeman, who are part of the team negotiating the HCA on behalf of the town, praised the security systems they saw at site visits to both existing retail locations as part of negotiations.

    “I couldn’t say enough positive things about the way both of their establishments are being run,” Reed said. Compared to dispensaries she said she’d seen both in and out of state, she said the two collaborating on this project were “impressive,” in terms of their facilities and professionalism.

    CANNABUSINESS

    New Marijuana Business Hatching in Truro

    Wellfleet and Eastham retailers are hoping to grow locally

    By

    TRURO — The owners of two planned cannabis retail shops, the Piping Plover in Wellfleet and the Salty Farmers in Eastham, are negotiating a community host agreement to grow and manufacture marijuana products at 1 Noons Heights Road in North Truro.

    The business owners are Zachary Ment, founder of the Piping Plover at 10 Main St. in Wellfleet, and Harlen Howard of Truro and Jonah Turner of Eastham, who are co-owners of Salty Farmers, which will have a retail shop at 182 Brackett Road (near Sam’s Deli) and a 2,000-square-foot indoor grow facility at 120 Holmes Road in Eastham.

    The Eastham and Wellfleet businesses already have provisional licenses from the state Cannabis Control Commission (CCC) to sell or grow marijuana. Final state licensing for the Piping Plover is expected on April 15, Ment told the Independent. He estimates he’ll be opening in May. Howard said renovations to the Eastham facilities are nearly complete and he hopes to be open in June.

    On March 23, Ment and Howard appeared before the Truro Select Board to apply to use the 960-square-foot ranch-style home on Noons Heights Road owned by Michael Winkler. The brown building, which is in a commercial zone, is visible from Route 6. Ment, Howard, and Turner want to add a kitchen to make edibles, including gummies, lozenges, and chocolates, Ment said.

    This building on Noons Heights Road in North Truro may become a cannabis manufacturing facility called the Hatchery. (Photo K.C. Myers)

    They will use about 100 square feet of the space for the indoor cultivation of special strains of marijuana, Ment said. The edibles would be for sale only in their own retail shops, Howard told the select board. No customers or members of the general public would be able to go inside “the Hatchery,” the working name for the Truro venture. Ment said the moniker could change.

    Select board member Kristen Reed and Town Manager Darrin Tangeman agreed to negotiate the terms of the host agreement with the business owners. Truro has just one other host agreement with a marijuana operation, the High Dune Craft Cooperative, which is still awaiting a provisional license to grow marijuana at five different farms, four in Truro and one in Wellfleet. The co-op members just completed a second list of questions from the CCC. They expect a provisional license soon after, said David DeWitt, one of the members of the cooperative.

    If Ment’s and Turner’s plan materializes, they will have taken the one cultivation and one manufacturing business licenses available in Truro. The cooperative, meanwhile, will be using a social equity license, which allows them to grow, manufacture, and deliver product, DeWitt explained.

    The High Dune Craft Cooperative agreement, signed in August 2019, stipulates that the farmers will contribute one percent of their gross sales in the first year, increasing to 3 percent in year three, to the town. Sales will be calculated by an independent auditor. There is a mediation process if six or more neighbors living 600 feet or fewer from the farms complain about nuisances such as noise or odor.

    Sue Areson of the select board asked Howard what happens inside a building that manufactures cannabis products.

    “We are going to build a nice kitchen,” he replied. “The idea is to keep our shelves stocked. It is edibles for ourselves.”

    The security plan, which must be approved by the Truro police, includes cameras and doors controlled by electronic key fobs, Howard said.

    With recreational marijuana shops banned in most Cape towns (except Mashpee, Orleans, and Brewster), pot purveyors are hoping the Outer Cape will become the green mile. Eastham expects to host two retail shops, Salty Farmers and Emerald Grove at the Main Street Mercantile complex on Route 6.

    In Wellfleet, besides Ment’s shop, there is Cape Cod Cannabis at the former South Wellfleet General Store, 1446 Route 6. It was inspected by the CCC in February and has been recommended for final licensing.

    Truro will have growers and manufacturing but no retail sales. Provincetown, meanwhile, already has two pot shops open for business, Curaleaf and b/well.

    The two Provincetown stores have so far paid the town $480,000 in taxes and fees for the year 2020. That corresponds to about $8.7 million in total sales.

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