TWELVE BUSY MARINAS ring the small shallow bay that lies between the curved base of Long Point and the Lake Erie shoreline. They are home to nearly 8,000 pleasure boats. In warm months these boats crowd the water disturbing fish and waterfowl in one of the richest habitats in southern Ontario. They spill gasoline and oil. Their owners demand the removal of aquatic plants that feed and shelter many species but prevent humans from roaring across the waves at high speed.
The boats are only part of the assault on the environment at Long Point, a 40 kilometre sandspit that arcs into the water from the lake's north shore like a giant, beckoning finger and that survives as the largest area of wilderness along the heavily developed shores of the lower Great Lakes.
Its combination of large, productive wetlands, spectacular beaches, windswept scrub bush and bird song-filled forests is an internationally recognized ecological treasure Home to 90 species of plants considered rare in Ontario and four found nowhere else in Canada, it is also a major breeding area for birds and a feeding stop for hundreds of thousands of migrating ducks and other waterfowl each spring and fall. The bay is an important spawning and nursery ground for fish that populate the entire lake.
Researchers from the Heritage Resources Centre at the University of Waterloo, who recently completed an 18-volume report on Long Point -- largely funded by The Royal Canadian Geographical Society -- conclude that it still has a healthy, high-quality environment. But, says Dr Gordon Nelson, the centre's director, there are a lot of signs that serious environmental problems could develop.
The boats and marinas are threats. So are the nearly 3, 000 duck hunters who descend on the wetlands each fall, the hundreds of sports fishermen and the large fleet of commercial fishing vessels. Adding to the impact are pesticides and fertilizers that run off from nearby farmland into creeks and eventually into Lake Erie.
More than 1,200 cottages have been built at the base of the point and around the bay; there are also permanent shoreline homes especially near the picturesque town of Port Rowan. Many owners, trying to prevent erosion have replaced the natural shoreline with boulders and concrete walls.
Local businesspeople, anxious to bring the area out of economic doldrums brought on by the recession and the decline of the region's main crop -- tobacco -- are pushing for more marinas and other projects creating the familiar conflict between conservation and development.
Long Point is in danger, Nelson says, of the cumulative effect of a lot of incremental changes.
The recent studies, conducted mainly by graduate students at the Heritage Resources Centre with a two- year, $50 000 Major Competitive Grant awarded by the Society in 1992, are part of an effort to ensure the survival of this priceless environment. Long Point is one of about 300 World Biosphere Reserves around the globe including six in Canada -- under the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
The 18 volumes, ranging from 12 to 84 pages of text, maps and charts, were formally presented in October to the Long Point Biosphere Committee, whose members include fishermen, farmers, environmentalists, marina operators, government officials and other competing interests trying to balance demands for economic growth and conservation and to promote appropriate human activities in the region.
Among the findings of the 18 state-of-the-environment reports:
┬╖ Water quality in the bay has declined because of pollution from farms cottages and boats.
┬╖ As in all of Lake Erie native fish stocks in the bay have plummeted. Researcher Brian Craig, who also chairs the biosphere committee, calls the numbers "really scary." Blue pike, herring, lake trout, yellow perch and other species that once dominated the fishery have drastically declined. Now, more than 90 percent of the catch is an introduced species rainbow smelt, and even it is under stress, Craig reports.
┬╖ Populations of frogs, snakes and turtles are falling.
┬╖ Development has destroyed about one third of the area's wetlands, and the amount of vegetation in the water may no longer be enough to feed migrating waterfowl.
┬╖ Fragmentation of forest patches, due to house building, logging and agriculture, threaten what "may be the most significant region for breeding birds in Southern Ontario." It includes substantial populations of 41 species, such as great blue herons, several types of hawks, bitterns, warblers and vireos.
Despite the troubling findings, Long Point "is not at the point where it's totally destroyed," says University of Waterloo geographer Patrick Lawrence, who headed the study team. The reports say "the (ecological) system is still running. The big question is what is the carrying capacity? How much more development pressure can it take?"
The environmental folio, however, will not make recommendations on the future of Long Point, Lawrence says. "We asked local people what issues they were interested in. We prepared the reports. Now, it's up to them to make use of them."
