LONG POINT BIOSPHERE RESERVE
Background, Overview and Issues
Long Point is the largest and most spectacular of the erosion deposit sand spit formations in the Laurentian Great Lakes. Extending some 32 km into the deepest part of Lake Erie from along its north shore, the point has a diverse mosaic of land and water habitats with a rich assortment of biodiversity. The Inner Bay between the point and the mainland is a productive aquatic ecosystem for the sports fishery, and a migration staging area of continental significance for waterfowl. Most of Long Point itself has been under strict protection since 1866. Much of the complex was designated as a Ramsar site in 1982.
Interest in the possibility of a biosphere reserve arose from an inter-university "Great Lakes Ecosystem Rehabilitation" (GLER) working group who conducted a series of studies from 1977 to 1985. The group applied an ecosystem stress-response framework to review the different stresses impacting upon the Great Lakes generally, and then chose two case examples of nearshore areas where the approach might be applied to identify practical measures that could be taken either to restore the area if already degraded, or to prevent degradation from occurring. For the Long Point area, GLER's interest was in determining whether the stress-response approach could be used to determine the sufficiency of environmental protective measures taken by various government agencies or other organizations to prevent serious degradation from human-induced stresses acting upon both the land and water components(1)
_____________
[Note: footnotes are at the end of this section of the report].
GLER worked collaboratively to draw upon the collective best judgements of a number of people including research workers, resource managers, and "user groups" to arrive at some consensus about the relative seriousness of particular stresses and the effectiveness of preventive or remedial measures directed to them by management agencies. As the GLER group concluded in its final report:
"There is sufficient understanding, institutional capabilities, and commitment among key agencies to adopt and adapt the approach proposed by an ecosystem rehabilitation strategy. Some facilitating arrangements are nevertheless needed. These would encourage more information exchange and cooperation and seek to relate particular efforts to a more widely shared ecosystem perspective and management goals for the whole Long Point complex. Application of the concept of a "biosphere reserve" is proposed as one way to help bring this about. A guiding image of what is being sought is captured by alliteration: management of uses by users in the Long Point ecosystem must be sensitive, sustaining, sufficient, and systemic" (Francis and others, 1985:vi-vii) (2)
The question of a biosphere reserve had been raised several years earlier under the aegis of Canada/MAB and its interests in fostering new biosphere reserves in Canada. When GLER convened a meeting in Simcoe, Ontario, in July 1981 with representatives of government agencies and different universities to discuss mutual interests and involvements in the Long Point area, the concept of a biosphere reserve was put forward for discussion(3). At a meeting of Canada/MAB's Working Group on Biosphere Reserves (WGBR) in October 1981, the Long Point complex was identified as one of several areas in Canada that had the potential to become a good biosphere reserve, and Canada/MAB at its semi-annual meeting in late November 1981, urged the WGBR to explore the possibility for a Long Point nomination.
A background study on Long Point as a biosphere reserve was completed by GLER in March 1982. A draft nomination for Long Point was prepared in May 1982, for use as background information in discussions with agency officials on what a biosphere reserve would entail. Officials in the key agencies having planning and/or management responsibilities for the Long Point area were contacted informally about the idea, starting first with the Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS) as owners of what would constitute much of the "core area" for a biosphere reserve. Correspondance was initiated after these informal contacts were made in order to engage the attention and response from people at different levels of authority in the different agencies. The idea of a biosphere reserve was put on the agenda of a GLER-sponsored seminar-workshop held in the Long Point area in November 1982, to report out its work and solicit comments and suggestions. GLER was encouraged to pursue the idea further and several individuals agreed to help with this.
Correspondence and other consultations were continued during 1983 and 1984. Canada/MAB, had approved a nomination for Long Point in principle in December 1983, following a recommendation from its WGBR. Local organizational arrangements for a biosphere reserve at that time were conceived largely as ones to foster closer cooperation among management agencies, with the CWS taking a lead, given its jurisdiction over much of the "core area" and important parts of the "buffer zones". By January 1985, support for the idea was sufficient for CWS to request that Canada/MAB proceed with the final nomination submission. Canada/MAB officially endorsed a revised nomination at its semi-annual meeting in June 1985. UNESCO's Scientific Advisory Panel recommended approval of the nomination at its meeting in September 1985, and the UNESCO/MAB Bureau approved the nomination in April 1986.
In September 1985, WGBR and GLER co-sponsored a public meeting at Long Point at which the work of both groups was reviewed and discussions held about the proposed Long Point Biosphere Reserve. The Long Point Foundation for Conservation (LPFC), which is well known in the community, offered to take the lead in forming a biosphere reserve group, and the key government agencies were in favour of having them do this to help build local interest and support. The LPFC convened a public meeting in the community which was attended by about 80 people in November 1985 to discuss the biosphere reserve concept. The Foundation agreed to appoint its Secretary to head up a local biosphere reserve group to be drawn from some 30 participants who expressed an interest at the meeting in becoming involved.
However, early in 1986 this initiative foundered when the Secretary of the LPFC who was to lead it, moved out of the community to pursue other business opportunities. In June 1986, the LPFC convened a meeting of people who had expressed interest in a biosphere reserve committee, and the 15 persons who attended elected a Steering Committee of six people to pursue this. At the time, there were at least 30 local organizations in the Long Point area which concerned themselves with different issues of conservation and wildlife; hunting, fishing, and other outdoor recreation; environmental protection; local land use and development; and local cultural heritage and tourism.
This Steering Committee met seven times between July 1986 and January 1989 to consider options for designing local organizational arrangements which would be inclusive as well as effective. They envisaged some kind of "Friends of Long Point" arrangement. The Steering Committee moved slowly, mainly because many people in the community were pre-occupied over a period of three to four years in the late 1980s with disputes about what should be done with the high water levels and associated storm damages to riparian properties along the shore of Lake Erie, and with changes in local zoning ordinances to favour several proposed shoreline marina/hotel developments. The disputes involved people who had expressed interest in the biosphere reserve, and the arguments sometimes came up during Steering Committee meetings.
By early 1989, the Steering Committee had agreed on something more elaborate than a "friends" group. They proposed three related committees: a Working Group of 41 people, a Management Advisory Committee of nine people, and a Technical Advisory Committee of nine people. It convened a public meeting in February 1989 to receive community endorsement for these arrangements and for nominees identified for each committee. The community meeting in February 1989 approved this proposal and suggested a few additional nominees for the Working Group.
Before disbanding itself, the Steering Committee convened a first meeting of the new Working Group, which was held in April 1990. Given the rather unwieldy organizational arrangements at this point, the Working Group decided to appoint a 15 person Executive Committee from among the Working Group members, and a Chairperson. This Executive Committee embarked upon a series of meetings over two years to develop a Constitution, prepare the legal documents for incorporation as a not-for-profit corporation and for obtaining charitable status (a legal requirement to allow it to issue tax receipts for donations), and consider fund-raising and public information activities(4) It decided to create an open membership organization (with several categories of membership support) and a 15 person Executive Committee elected for three year terms. Annual meetings of the membership would elect officers of the organization and one-third of the Executive so that there would be an orderly turnover which brought new people from the community into the executive.
The first annual meeting under this arrangement was held in April 1991. The organization was incorporated as the Long Point World Biosphere Reserve Foundation in April 1992, it received its charitable status at about the same time, the legally required By-Law Number 1 ("A By-Law relating generally to the conduct of the affairs of the Corporation") was approved during 1993 and formally approved by the Foundation membership at the fourth annual meeting in April 1994. This arrangement of annual meetings of the membership with key speakers on topical subjects, elections, and more frequent meetings of the executive between annual meetings has been retained ever since. The paid-up membership has been over 200 or so individuals each year. This format has encouraged informal cooperation among government agencies and non-governmental groups as individuals affiliated with, or employed by other organizations, were elected to the Executive Committee for the biosphere reserve.
The Long Point Biosphere Reserve receives no administrative support funds from government agencies, a matter of periodic concern and criticism from core volunteers. The biosphere reserve's priorities are associated with fund-raising. These include special fund-raising events such as the annual February "Groundhog Day Dinner and Dance" (associated with a light-hearted myth about groundhogs, a species of marmot); co-sponsorship of other community events, in part for the publicity; and raising funds for special projects. Over the past decade, the funding support raised by volunteers has gone from a few hundred dollars per year to an annual average of about $50k over the last five years; this has varied widely (from ~$6k to $130k) and is entirely dependent upon the time that volunteers can devote to successful project fund-raising. The time and work this requires may have discouraged some volunteers from becoming more involved with the biosphere reserve.
The main public information, education, and public outreach activities have included: (a) signage, including a major billboard depicting the biosphere reserve which was erected on a bluff at the end of the main street of Port Rowan overlooking Inner Long Point Bay, and roadside signs on each of the two highways entering the biosphere reserve; (b) a poster on the Long Point Settlement (and biosphere reserve) with a chronology of historical events (prepared by a member of the former Steering Committee in 1990); (c) a three-panel display depicting biosphere reserves generally, Canadian biosphere reserves, and the highlights of the Long Point Biosphere Reserve; (d) an organized talk with slides which can be presented by members to different community groups; (e) a poster for all the local public schools; (f) brochures for secondary schools and libraries in the area (distributed along with Canada/MAB brochures); (g) an annual 8-10 page tabloid "Biosphere Bulletin" describing activities over the year, distributed as an insert in "The Port Rowan Good News", a monthly community newspaper, or instead, individual articles submitted to the newspaper from time to time; (h) participation in periodic clean-ups of refuse along the causeway linking the mainland to the Point in cooperation with others as a community service; (i) participation in the "Leading Edge" series of conferences organized by the Niagara Escarpment Biosphere Reserve, and (j) maintenance of a a web site at: http://www.cbra-acrb.ca/english/biosphere_reserves/longpoint/default.asp.
The biosphere reserve group also sponsored development of a "Community Action Plan" (1993-1994) with considerable input of ideas from people in the community about things that could be done locally to enhance conservation or the sustainable use of resources. This has given some guidance to the biosphere reserve group in thinking about its own activities. It also worked closely with a group from the Heritage Resources Centre at the University of Waterloo during 1992-1994 to prepare "An Environmental Folio for the Long Point World Biosphere Reserve and Area" (1996). The 16 chapter Folio distills information from sets of working papers, technical reports and student theses that compiled and analyzed information about the Long Point area from a wide array of sources to make it more readily available and usable by others. Permission has been obtained to make the entire folio available on the LPBR website, along with other major studies done in the area.
Monitoring has been a recurring theme of interest in the LPBR, but developing a comprehensive approach to it remains elusive. There are no legal or policy requirements for government agencies to monitor the "ecosystem health" (or the "ecological integrity") of either the aquatic or terrestrial ecosystems in the biosphere reserve. LPBR's main activities associated with the design of a possible monitoring system have been: [a] holding a workshop in 1993 to identify the range of stresses acting upon Long Point ecosystems (this was to up-date and compare with results from a similar workshop convened by GLER in 1980); [b] preparing the Community Action Plan (noted above) which identified some monitoring possibilities; [c] compiling an inventory (in 1995) of about 50 different monitoring programs being conducted by government agencies and non-governmental organizations in the Long Point area, each for their own purposes, with a view to identifying possible "gaps" that could be filled through volunteer programs; [d] updating the inventory with a map of monitoring sites in 1999, and [e] holding informal meetings to consider the design of a Long Point Country Monitoring Framework to mesh community interests with some current understanding of ecosystem dynamics. A number of issues remain unresolved for developing this approach.
The LPBR took the initiative to establish four biodiversity monitoring plots using the protocols and information system developed by the Washington-based Smithsonian Institution's "Monitoring Assessment of Biodiversity" program (SI/MAB). Each SI/MAB plot is one hectare sub-divided into 25 quadrants of 20 x 20 m. Inventories have been made of trees and shrubs in each plot, and surveys have been done as opportunities allow for mapping herbaceous vegetation, and compiling inventories of breeding birds, amphibians, and more recently, earthworms. A climate monitoring tower has been constructed for one of these plots with sensors to detect micro-environmental conditions ranging from the upper tree canopies to about 100 cm in the soil below. For the past several years, a week-long "Biodiversity Field Camp" has been held in August for students in the age range of 13-15 years who are introduced to field work associated with information gathering for the SI/MAB biodiversity monitoring plots maintained by the biosphere reserve. Some students who had participated in this camp made a presentation to a UNESCO conference for young scientists in Paris, in April 1998.
Research in the LPBR is being conducted by other agencies and non-governmental groups which are informally affiliated with the biosphere reserve. Some of the main topics addressed over the past decade include: [a] studies on the impact of deer populations on the regeneration of vegetation on Long Point, before and after a major reduction of the deer herd in 1989 and 1990; [b] study of the ecology of Lyme disease, which is carried by infected "ticks" (an arthropod, Ixodes sp.) through small mammals and deer to humans at Long Point (one of only a few places where it had been confirmed in Canada); [c] study of population trends of migrating landbirds at field stations maintained by the Long Point Bird Observatory since 1960; [d] various studies on waterfowl staging at Long Point, including their numbers, food habits and food sources; [e] studies of the longshore transfer of sediments and on shore movements of these into fore-dunes and dune areas at Long Point; [f] monitoring of sports fish stocks in Long Point Bay by index trawls, creel surveys, and angler diary programs; [g] water quality sampling in Long Point Bay for major ions, nutrients, metals and organochlorine pesticides; and [h] changes in breeding bird populations between 1979 and 1989 on managed and natural coastal marshes in the Big Creek National Wildlife Area.
The main demonstration project carried out by the LPBR has been the "Forest Corridor Project" (1995-1998). This was to help landowners assess and enhance the quality of remnant forests, reduce the forest fragmentation, and increase the connectivity among patches in ways that could benefit both agriculture and wildlife. Some 1,800 ha were surveyed and inventories made at the request of landowners, and about 57 ha were restored, involving about 100 community volunteers. A related "Project CARE - Carolinian Action, Restoration and Education" engaged students in the collection of seeds from native trees and grasses and the propagation of seedlings for use in restoration work. Funding for 2001-2002 has been received from Ontario Power Generation, which is linking reforestation to emissions-trading credits, to continue this project.
The LPBR has also worked with several local hunters and anglers groups in 1996 to conduct an information campaign, using factsheets and signs, to request boaters to refrain from disturbing large flocks of resting waterfowl in Long Point Bay. It also co-sponsors a "live release boat" with a local anglers group to help promote catch and release sports fishing.
The LPBR also played a leading role in the formation of the Canadian Biosphere Reserves Association / l'Association Canadienne des Reserves de la Biosphere (CBRA/ACRB) in 1996 by providing administrative support (office space, use of its charitable status to help with initial fund-raising) and the first Chair of CBRA/ACRB, who was previously the Chair of LPBR. The LPBR has also shown leadership in part through their active participation in several CBRA/ACRB-sponsored collaborative projects through shared funding with other biosphere reserves, notably, studies of the history of landscape change, trends in local climate data, initiating local restoration projects, and planning for eco-tourism initiatives based around the special features of the biosphere reserve (5).
Back to Table of Contents
Back to Long Point Biosphere publications index