2024 is the third year, as per a five-year management right agreement, that Horseshoe Island and its adjacent tidal waters have been closed to all public uses from March 1 to Sept. 1 to protect shorebirds, including beach-nesting birds. This former shoal on the southern edge of Little Egg Inlet, just offshore of Little Beach Island, was consistently tidally overwashed, and eventually transitioned to an island that regularly remains above high tide – and has become a haven for avian species.

As Todd Pover, senior wildlife biologist with Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey, explained, an emergent…