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No man is an island. But Nomans Land is an island, in every sense of the word: surrounded by water, isolated, distinct.
It’s part of the traditional lands and waters of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), whose ancestors have lived for thousands of years on the nearby island of Noepe — or Martha's Vineyard. A Wampanoag story tells of a giant named Moshup, who created Nomans Land when he drew a line with his big toe through a spit of sand that reached from Noepe into the ocean.
It is a place set apart. It feels that way.
“It’s only three miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, but it’s a different world,” said Eileen McGourty, a biologist at Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge.
“No facilities, no cell coverage, no drinking water.”
Also, no high-speed ferry.
No pleasure cruise
McGourty and a team of biologists from the Service, MassWildlife and New Hampshire Fish and Game spent nearly a week on Nomans Land last September. They had to bring in — and back out — everything they needed on a 40-foot aluminum landing craft.
“You can’t just pull any boat up there,” said Grace Bottitta-Williamson, manager of the Eastern Massachusetts National Wildlife Refuge Complex. “The seas are rough; the shore is cobbly.”
Oh, and there’s no dock. After about an hour’s boat ride from the mainland, the biologists had to slosh the final few feet through water, with their gear, to reach the beach.
And when I say they had to bring everything, I mean everything: a toilet, propane stoves, pots and pans, food, water, tents for cooking, tents for sleeping, two brush mowers, several brush clippers, a small refrigerator, a solar panel and a dozen pet carriers. Those were empty, to start.
This was no pleasure cruise. The biologists were there to assess a new population of New England’s only native rabbit.
Island hopping
In 2011, biologists surveyed several small islands off the coast of Massachusetts and Rhode Island to see if they had suitable habitat for New England cottontails. With plenty of dense thicket to provide shelter and food, both Nomans Land, a national wildlife refuge national wildlife refuge
A national wildlife refuge is typically a contiguous area of land and water managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for the conservation and, where appropriate, restoration of fish, wildlife and plant resources and their habitats for the benefit of present and future generations of Americans.
Learn more about national wildlife refuge , and Patience Island, part of the Narragansett Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, met the bar.
At the time, the Service was assessing the status of the New England cottontail to determine if it needed protection under the Endangered Species Act. Meanwhile, partners were working together to try to avoid the need to list through proactive conservation measures — including breeding cottontails in captivity at zoos and using their offspring to seed new populations across the species’ range.
In 2015, the Service determined the New England cottontail did not warrant listing, thanks largely to proactive conservation, but the species has remained a shared priority among partners in the New England states who are working together to keep its numbers growing. Captive breeding and targeted reintroductions continue, and the inherent isolation of islands like Nomans Land makes them good places to establish new colonies of an at-risk species.
One of the reasons the New England cottontail had been declining was competition from an introduced look-a-like: the eastern cottontail. Fortunately, there were no eastern cottontails on Nomans Land or Patience Island, and no large land-based predators, like coyotes. Just birds of prey.
Love Island, for bunnies
After conducting an assessment to ensure there would be no negative environmental impacts, the Service coordinated with MassWildlife to release 13 New England cottontails — five females and eight males — on Nomans Land in May 2019.
The following May, they released eight more: two males and six females.
A year after that, they released another five: four males and one female.
In 2022, the Service partnered with researchers from the University of New Hampshire to estimate how many New England cottontails were now on Nomans Land by conducting surveillance with wildlife cameras and collecting droppings for genetic analysis.
So, what do you get when you combine 12 female and 14 male rabbits on an island a little smaller than Central Park over the course of three years?
The estimate was astonishing.
“400 rabbits,” McGourty reported. “None of us anticipated the population would increase that fast.”
Down the rabbit hole
While the reintroduction effort on Nomans Land is clearly working, biologists wanted to take a pulse check at the five-year mark: hence the recent expedition. There were multiple objectives.
First, they wanted to redo the habitat survey conducted in 2011 to see if there had been any significant changes to the landscape.
“We wanted to be sure the rabbits weren't altering the habitat for other species that call the island home,” McGourty said.
They also wanted to collect more droppings for genetic analysis to determine if the population was still growing. The goal was for it to stabilize around 500.
Finally, they wanted to catch some rabbits to move to suitable sites on the mainland that need new bunnies to grow their populations.
Not exactly a Fantasy Island
None of this was easy, in part because the rabbits’ happy place is full of perils — both natural and unnatural — for people.
Before it was transferred to the Service as Nomans Land Island National Wildlife Refuge, Nomans Land was used by the Navy for aerial bombing practice from 1942 to 1996. Everyone who went on the trip was required to take unexploded ordnance training first.
Then there are the natural hazards.
“The island is covered with dense, impenetrable brush,” said Donovan Drummey, a biologist with the Service’s Science Applications program who helped with vegetation surveys. "There are lots of thorny plants.”
Before the team could even begin to survey the vegetation, they needed to cut paths through it. Hence, the lawnmowers. The freshly mowed paths also made it easier to see and collect freshly deposited rabbit droppings.
The seven-day itch
Drummey was well prepared for the briars, with work gloves, heavy pants and long sleeves. She wasn’t expecting the sand fleas that invaded her tent at night. “Worst bug bites of my life.” She tallied 72 itchy welts.
For Heidi Holman, a biologist with New Hampshire Fish and Game who coordinates the captive-breeding and reintroduction program for New England cottontail across New England, the biggest challenge was avoiding poison ivy while setting and checking rabbit traps.
“I had a bottle of rubbing alcohol and alcohol wipes to clean gear, a bottle of poison-ivy wash, and enough clothes to not wear the same shirt twice,” she said.
Holman was successful, both at outmaneuvering poison ivy and at trapping rabbits alongside biologists from MassWildlife.
“We trapped 10 rabbits the first night and five during a second night, meeting our goal of 15 animals for the trip,” she said.
The rabbits were her ticket off the island. Once the trapping team met their goal, they were transported back to the mainland to minimize the time the animals were held in pet carriers. The rabbits then went into quarantine for 14 days to ensure they were healthy before release: Five went to Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge in Maine, and 10 went to Great Bay National Wildlife Refuge in New Hampshire.
McGourty said it will be a while before they have results of the genetic analysis of the droppings from the University of New Hampshire. The habitat survey results will also take time, but she didn't detect noticeable changes to the vegetation.
“We saw a lot of evidence of browse on certain plant species, but there’s still plenty that hasn’t been browsed on yet,” she said.
No picnic
Life on Nomans Land was no picnic for the biologists because it was literally a picnic at every meal. Each team member had to pack in all their own food — a week’s worth of breakfast, lunch and dinner.
McGourty brought dehydrated backpacker meals for dinner, oatmeal for breakfast and peanut butter and jelly for lunch. “Plus some fun snacks, like chocolate.”
Holman also brought dehydrated backpacker meals, including macaroni chili and pad Thai, as well as oatmeal, trail mix, fresh-baked rolls and tuna packets for lunch and a few fresh nectarines. “And of course, coffee.”
Drummey, a tea drinker, brought oatmeal and eggs for breakfast, apples, trail mix and granola bars for lunch, hummus and vegetable wraps and packets of heat-and-eat Indian food for dinner.
And for the rabbits? Apples, not carrots, were used to bait the traps.
The days were long and tiring. Most folks rose with the sun to make breakfast and headed out to start surveys around 7:00 a.m.
After eight hours in the sun methodically measuring vegetation density, counting plant stems, documenting which plants showed signs of rabbit munching or collecting droppings, they returned to camp to change out of poison ivy-tainted clothes, eat dinner and go to sleep on the ground.
A natural Treasure Island
But every island harbors treasures.
Drummey said occasionally during surveys, she would surface from the thicket at the top of a bluff to discover a breathtaking ocean vista.
Kathryn Nolan, another biologist with Science Applications who joined the trip, emerged from her tent one night to see the northern lights above, undiluted by the light pollution of the mainland.
Day and night, gray seals kept the biologists company, watching them from the water and serenading them with their eerie wails.
“Nomans Land is a beautiful place,” said Bottitta-Williamson, the refuge manager.
The Service and the Tribe co-steward places like Nomans Land to ensure the Tribe has access to its ancestral lands and management actions are sensitive to their culture.
Reviving the New England cottontail, a species known to inhabit Noepe historically, is a shared goal for the Service, the Tribe and partners across New England.
Nomans Land may seem like an isolated dot of sand, rocks and shrubs in the North Atlantic Ocean, but it is part of something much bigger.
