FWS Meeting With Sportsman’s Club Again About Pilot Island

Pilot Island. File photo by Tim Sweet.

For the second time this year, the Washington Island Sportsman’s Club will sit down with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) over concerns it has with the current condition of Pilot Island.

Sportsman’s Club member Rip Koken said the public meeting is set for Dec. 14 starting at 10 am in the Washington Island Community Center’s Rutledge Room.

The Sportsman’s Club wants the FWS to stop using the 3.5-acre island off the tip of the Door peninsula as a colonial sanctuary for cormorants and other migratory birds, and restore the island as it existed decades ago, where a lighthouse was built in 1858.

Support for the Sportsman’s Club efforts were bolstered in February when the Door County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution disapproving of the island’s current use as a colonial bird nesting area. 

The Town of Washington and the Town of Liberty Grove previously went on record in support of a change in the management of Pilot Island as called for by the Sportsman’s Club, which has also been conducting an online petition drive at savepilotisland.com.