Virginia wants to make Fort Wool island an avian habitat. Historical groups say plan is for the birds.

They all cried fowl.

Several historic groups want the state to rethink its plan to convert the parade grounds on Fort Wool into a sandy habitat for Virginia’s seabird colony — pushed out from its former nesting site by the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel expansion.

Calling itself the “Coalition for Historic Fort Wool,” the group sent letters to several state agencies to little avail, they said.

Dozens of letters and emails later, members finally got on a call earlier this month with state officials from Department of Historic Resources and Department of Conservation and Recreation, which oversees the island. Chief concerns are the lack of public access, the condition of the historic structures and the birds. State officials said they are amenable to working with the coalition, that Fort Wool is only a temporary situation and an alternative solution is in the works.

“(State officials) have decided that the Coalition for Historic Fort Wool was not going to go away and it was better to engage us, rather than stonewall us,” Terry McGovern, a regional rep for the nonprofit Costal Defense Study Group, wrote in an email. He added that the group appreciates the need to protect the birds and expand the tunnel. “There should be a balance between cultural and natural resources.”

Particularly at stake is the steel tower, once a focal point of strategy during World War II, and the last of its kind still standing. Now with rusted supports, it needs to be shored up. The state’s engineers recommend tearing it down. Coalition members believe that can be avoided, and the tower saved.

The clamor over Fort Wool is the latest in a protracted confluence of events that pits its historical significance against the plight of Virginia’s massive seabird colony against the necessity to improve highway infrastructure.

“It’s the gateway to Hampton Roads. When you stand on Fort Wool, you can see how the ocean and the bay connects Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Hampton and Newport News. It’s an important regional symbol, “said J. Michael Cobb, a historian and its longtime curator. “We’re certainly not against wildlife for any means but this is not a good use of Fort Wool. We should work together ... to find a good place for the seabirds and restore Fort Wool ... to the way it was.”

Fort Wool, also known as Rip Rap Island, was built on a shoal in 1819 as a companion stronghold to Fort Monroe. The some 10-15 acre property is stitched into American war history, earning it a spot on state and national historic registries. Owned by the commonwealth and formerly leased by Hampton, the fort was deemed unsafe due to deteriorating conditions and has been closed to the public since last spring.

Last year, state wildlife officials began refurbishing the island, pulling up vegetation and putting down sand to create a cozy nesting environment for some 25,000 birds. The colony flies back to Hampton Roads from warmer climates — an annual spring ritual — to begin feeding and its cycle of laying and hatching eggs.

Decades earlier, thousands of gulls, terns, black skimmer and similar birds flocked to another man-made depot in the harbor, a patch of dirt on the south island facility of the Hampton Road Bridge-Tunnel. The seabirds were drawn because of its isolated locale from predators and abundant marine-life food source.

But as Virginia inched closer to carving out a long-term solution to Interstate 64 traffic, the state poured concrete over the habitat during the 2019 winter season. It was considered a necessary sacrifice as the Virginia Department of Transportation launched its $3.8 billion project to expand the tunnel and needed the space for its construction crews. A change in the Migratory Bird Treaty Act during the last presidential administration limited some protections, enabling the state to eliminate the habitat.

Wildlife advocates complained. In response, Virginia crafted another plan last year with state conservation and wildlife officials, mandated by Gov. Ralph Northam, to find another suitable habitat. The curiously kidney-shaped island, Fort Wool, connected to south island by a rock jetty, needed some retooling to make it amenable to the colony, but would work, officials said.

Officials at the state’s Department of Wildlife Resources took the lead transforming the rustic park, pulling up trees, adding pest controls and covering the parade grounds with sand. The agency also dropped anchors for a few barges, also loaded with sand, as well as sand on sections of the jetty, to create additional nesting areas.

“The removal of the vegetation is definitely a good thing, because there were trees and growing into the walls ... of the structures and helping facilitate, or accelerate the deterioration,” said Tom Smith, the deputy director of operations with the Department of Conservation and Recreation, which now oversees Fort Wool. Smith added the shrubs grew into casemate roofs and are penetrating the ceiling.

Most of what is being continued this season was done last spring, said Becky Gwynn, a biologist with DWR. Crews there also agreed to complete the enclosure of door and window openings into the batteries, to prevent the accidental entrapment of breeding birds in interior spaces, according to a Department of Historic Resources report. Wildlife resource officials spent $1.7 million for lease and placement of barges, the social attraction work and creation of the Fort Wool habitat, Gwynn said in an email.

A plan to place sand on top of one of the batteries was aborted due to time constraints.

“They’re flat top barges that have sand loaded onto them so that we can get roughly two to two-and -a-half acres of nesting area for the birds between the space on Fort Wool and the space on the barges,” she said. “That’s still only about a quarter of the space the birds historically used when they were nesting on the south island. It’s a good place to start. This is definitely a temporary solution.”

An alternate idea in its nascent stages with the Army Corps of Engineers is to take soil and dredge already accumulating to create an artificial island for the birds exclusively, Gwynn said. The project needs to factor things such as proximity to military air space and for it to be generally close enough to lure the birds now nesting from Fort Wool.

“There will be engagement of a whole lot of other people who have interests in and passion for all things Chesapeake Bay, so that we find the right best place to locate this island for the birds,” Gwynn said.

State historic officials also have chimed in, but their role is to assist these agencies by reviewing their plans to ensure that their decisions and activities do not negatively impact the historic resources, director Julie Langan said in an email.

“(We have) no immediate concerns,” she wrote. “The long-term needs of Fort Wool are considerable and require a source of funding that has yet to be identified.

Freedom’s island

Before the shovels hit the ground in the late 1950s to build the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel, a young Michael Cobb often soaked in the harbor’s vistas via his cousin’s boat. During these moments, the future historian caught glimpses of Fort Wool.

“I heard my cousin on the radio, he said ‘We’re off Fort Wool.’ I looked over there. Little did I know that one day I would have an important part in and bringing Fort Wool back to the public,” said Cobb, now 73. “Those rocks are important to me.”

Originally called the “Rip Rap Shoals Fort Calhoun,” Fort Wool was named for John C. Calhoun, a former U.S. Secretary of War, shortly after the War of 1812, before he became a leading proponent of Southern secession. Enslaved men forged the batteries and stone casemates on the man-made island. Among those who help build the fort was Shepard Mallory, who would later seek freedom at Fort Monroe, with two others, becoming contraband of war, Cobb said.

During the Civil War, it was renamed in honor of Union Army Commander John E. Wool. Presidents, including Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Jackson stood in those casemates, and many people escaping slavery from Norfolk made their way via boat to Fort Wool, just as they did to Fort Monroe.

“Just as we can say Fort Monroe was ‘Freedom’s Fortress’ we can say Fort Wool was ‘Freedom’s island,’” Cobb said.

The Army used the fort during World War II, but decades later, it was decommissioned and transferred to the commonwealth. Located within Hampton city limits, officials there entered into a lease agreement in 1970, but it did not open to the public until 1985, Cobb said.

“It was closed, It was sitting there abandoned,” he said.

The city operated it as a park and tourist attraction during the summers, with public access via boat. According to a 2019 state DHR report, Fort Wool enjoyed a visitation rate of 7,000 persons per year. In its lease, Hampton was responsible for the day-to-day maintenance of the site, but the lease did not specifically address who was responsible historic preservation or restoration on the site, a city spokeswoman said. The lease agreement ended March 2020.

The site has been crumpling and deteriorating and is sinking into the Chesapeake Bay, something that has been happening since Civil War times, according to a 2019, DHR maintenance report of historic structures. That report also states that with the rate of current sea level rise, Fort Wool soon will be submerged.

Hampton officials said the city first became aware of conversations to relocate the tern colony to the site early 2019. In a letter to both secretaries of the DOT and Department of Natural Resources, City Manager Mary Bunting pitched Hampton’s Grandview Nature Preserve as an alternative to Fort Wool because “tern relocation would cause irreparable harm to it,” she wrote.

While Tom Smith at the Department of Conservation and Recreation said anything attached to land likely wouldn’t work for these birds for fear of its predators, a plan to design another habitat island, may not work in time to save Fort Wool, Cobb said.

“Fort Wool has been settling since the 1860s. They have put tons and tons of sand on that island. Putting all that sand on there, plus running that heavy equipment on the island and put the sand down jars the entire foundation,” Cobb said. “Time is of the essence. When Fort Wool is compromised, as it has been, then it is bad for the region, for the people of Hampton Roads, people of Virginia and the people of America.”

Lisa Vernon Sparks, 757-247-4832, lvernonsparks@dailypress.com