A Vanishing Point

A VANISHING POINT

Wednesday, June 06, 2007 (Napanee Beaver)

Friday, June 08, 2007 (Picton Gazette)

World famous Point Pelee is disappearing – at least, part of it is.

This national park, the most southern part of Ontario, indeed, all of Canada, is losing its sandy tip at the very end of the peninsula. It has always been a dynamic spot, changing regularly according to the whims of the storms and currents in Lake Erie, moving back and forth in the lake like a mosquito larva in a pond. In 2000, the sandspit reached out into Lake Erie from the tip of Point Pelee as far as a kilometre. Last winter, it disappeared, due to storms, along with a viewing platform and about 10 metres of vegetation. It has now been gone for five months, and the thousands of visitors who descend onto this famous birding spot are afraid they may never see it again.

This unvegetated tip of the peninsula was a popular staging area for thousands of shorebirds, gulls and terns, and watchers of shorebirds. An article in a recent issue of the Windsor Star says, There’s a very real chance that, if everything continues as is, it’s not coming back.”

Compounding the problem is that the construction of harbours and piers north of Point Pelee collects sand and prevents it from naturally rebuilding the park’s shoreline, and the dredging of harbours takes available sand out of the natural system. Shoreline protection of homes on the east and west sides of Wheatley has also slowed erosion of new sand, and prevented it from being carried by currents that in the past deposited it at Point Pelee, ensuring the return of the sandspit, even if it did disappear for a short time. Today, this one time renewable resource is simply no longer there. It hasn’t helped much either that lake sand from Point Pelee was regularly mined from as far back as 1910, and only ceased in 1984. An estimated 3.9 million cubic metres of sand and gravel was removed, enough to fill Toronto’s domed baseball stadium, the Rogers Centre, more than twice. Collectively, that’s a lot of sand removed from the system.

With the sandspit now gone, further weather disturbances are now undercutting the trees at the base of this finger of sand. According to Park Superintendent Marian Stranak, the forested tip is a very fragile part of the park. “The park, she says, “cannot afford to lose what little is left of the rare Carolinian forest in southwestern Ontario.”

Because of its lure to the birding fraternity, the 275,000 tourists annually drop about 10 million dollars into the local economy.

Point Pelee, was formed by the deposition of sand, up to 200 feet in depth, over a ridge of Denovian limestone. Due to its location, the park is home to a wide diversity of wildlife, including numerous southern species that reach their northern limit here. For many years, it has been a popular destination for birders during spring migration. Jutting out into Lake Erie, it is the first point of land that birds see after crossing the open lake. During certain weather conditions, some species reach phenomenal numbers as birds “pile up” waiting for conditions to improve, before continuing their migration northward.

As naturalists, we know that nothing in nature remains constant. Islands and spits of land are created, then disappear. At Presqu’ile Park, for example, only long time birders remember that Owen Point once had a parking lot, a boat launch, floating docks, and a deep channel that separated a tiny island from the mainland. Today, it is difficult to find the former location of the docks as the channel is gone, the island is part of the mainland, and where boats once tied up, a well vegetated land mass has formed. Similarly, sand spits, like the one at Point Pelee are destined to change. However, losing the fragile sand spit at Point Pelee has been likened to losing the lighthouse at Peggy’s Cove. And it has birders who frequent this famous park worried, since they are losing a popular staging and viewing area. In an e-mail received from Minden resident and birder Ron Pittaway, “It seems a matter of time until the forested tip is gradually undercut by waves or a violent Lake Erie storm cuts openings across the narrow forested tip…….birders and all who value Point Pelee must know what is happening before it is too late.”

What exactly can be done? One suggestion includes long groynes built perpendicular to the park, thus trapping the sand. However, the park can’t act alone in any remedial action since the reasons for the disappearing sand are complex, and involves far more than just Nature at work within the park boundaries. There would need to be cooperation and involvement from shoreline owners and businesses whose developmental activities are contributing to the loss of sand at Point Pelee.