Taking Action to Protect the Globally Significant
Islands of the Great Lakes: A Draft Strategy
October 2001
Contents
Introduction
Proposed Mission Statement
Goals and Action
Main Thrusts
1: Assess Island Values
2: Increase Island Education and Outreach
3: Improve Island Conservation
References
Appendix: Values of the Islands of the Great Lakes
Introduction
The 30,000 islands of the Great Lakes form the world's largest collection of freshwater islands and are globally significant in terms of their biological diversity (Crispin 1998). Some of the islands are among the last remaining wildlands on Earth. Crispin (1998) argues that we consider the islands as Aa single irreplaceable resource and protected as a whole if the high value of this natural heritage is to be maintained. While we do not yet have data for the other states, Michigan's Great Lakes islands contain one-tenth of the state's threatened, endangered, or rare species while representing only one-hundredth of the land areaCseven times more than expected (Soule 1998). All of Michigan's threatened, endangered, or rare coastal species occur at least in part on its islands (Soule 1998). The natural features of particular importance are the marshes, colonial waterbirds, neartic-neotropical migrant songbirds, endemic plants, and towering dunes (Soule 1998).
By their very nature, islands are more sensitive to human influence than the mainland and need special protection to conserve their natural values (Carlquist 1974; McEachern and Towle 1974; Meffe and Carroll 1994; Quammen 1997; Soule 1993; Udall 1963; Weiner 1994; Wilson and Peter 1988). The Great Lakes islands represent a unique opportunity to protect a resource of global importance because many islands remain intact (Soule 1998). At the same time, proposals to develop islands are increasing. This is occurring even before we have the scientific information and processes in place to evaluate, prioritize, and make appropriate natural resource decisions. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Great Lake Basin Ecosystem Team (GLBET) is unique in its ability and charge to focus on issues of ecoregional importance. The Island Committee will provide leadership and resources to improve the protection and management of islands of the Great Lakes.
On August 16-17, 2001, the Island Committee of GLBET met at Seney National Wildlife Refuge. Attendees included staff from the US Fish and Wildlife Service and partners from USEPA Great Lakes National Program Office, USGS Great Lakes Science Center, and Michigan State University's Great Lakes Islands Project1. The group worked for two half-day sessions to draft a mission statement, discuss island priorities and next steps, and elect a new chairperson. We used consensus documents from the 1996 Great Lakes Islands Workshop to guide our discussions (Vigmostad 1998).
Committee members include: Tracy Casselman, Jack Dingledine, Dan Frisk, Rich Greenwood, Kurt Kowalski, Mara Lindsley, Patti Meyers, Douglas Spencer, Michael Tansy, Karen Vigmostad, and Emily Zollweg.
Proposed Mission Statement
The USFWS Great Lakes Islands Committee will work in partnership to understand, protect, manage, and restore the globally significant biodiversity of the islands of the Great Lakes with a focus on meeting USFWS trust resource objectives.
Goals and Action
We will work to increase the capacities of partners and the public to conserve the islands for the benefit of this and future generations.
Our focus will be to identify and protect islands and archipelagos that are of particular importance to Fish and Wildlife Service trust resources. These trust resources are:
- Migratory birds: colonial waterbirds, neotropical-neartic migrants, and others under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
- Threatened and endangered species
- Interjurisdictional fish: lake trout, sturgeon, whitefish, and others
Primary trust responsibilities include:
- Threatened and endangered species: recover and conserve; protect and enhance
- Wetlands
- Contaminants issues including natural resource damage assessments:
- Interjurisdictional fish species
Main Thrusts
Specifically, our committee agreed on three main thrusts:
- Assess Island Values
- Increase Island Education and Outreach
- Improve Island Conservation
1. Assess Island Values
The purpose of assessment activities is to understand the values of the islands and determine priorities for protection. To do this we will compile existing information, create a selection method and design an acquisition decision process. From these activities we will designate island focus areas based on investigating questions such as:
- Where are the islands that currently support known trust resources
- Where are island habitats that could support trust resources
- What are the biodiversity values of these islands
- What are the threats and stressors to these islands
- Where are the endangered and threatened species
- Where are the habitat for neotropical-neartic migrants
- Where interjurisdictional fish spawning
- Where are the feeding areas for colonial waterbirds
In order address these questions, we will undertake the following steps:
A. Work to compile an inventory of inventories and bibliography
We will assess the current sources of knowledge of island resources by compiling an Ainventory of inventories (Vigmostad 1998). There are many island inventory data available, but they are scattered in many places and not readily available. We want to compile existing information then determine gaps in scientific knowledge. We will begin by building on the work of Judith Soule for Michigan islands. We will contribute to the creation of a decision support system, define the available and important data to be included, and work with partners to populate the data. We will also compile a working island bibliography.
Action: GIS/DSS members are building a decision support system (DSS) that will serve as the basis of an inventory of inventories. The Island Committee will support these efforts. Progress will be reported at the October GLBET meeting.
Action: The Island Committee will determine the available and important data once the standard protocol and evaluation system (discussed below) are completed.
Action: Karen Vigmostad of Michigan State University will continue to compile a working island bibliography. She will report progress at the October GLBET meeting.
B. Create standard biological monitoring protocol
We feel there is a need to create a simple, standard protocol that can be used when managers, researchers, and other qualified people do site visits on islands. The checklist will be a simple presence/absence list and feed into our CCP and partner programs to guide the management of trust resources. A guidance document will also be developed. The checklist and guidance will be shared with partners and refined. The final products will be compatible with the DSS, put on a web site so it is widely available, and be selectively distributed in education and outreach activities. The committee needs to decide if the data from these checklists should be centrally collected, and if so by whom.
Action: Kurt working via email with Mike, Doug, and Dave will create a draft habitat assessment checklist. Progress will be reported at the October GLBET meeting.
C. Island evaluation and ranking system
The Island Committee believes protection and value criteria are needed so that we can identify and prioritize critical island habitat for acquisition and management purposes.
Action: Identify and review existing benchmark evaluation and ranking systems (such as USFS acquisition, the Nature Conservancy, Michigan Natural Features Inventory, and the Gulf of Maine). Tracy will talk with Stan Skutek regarding the Gulf of Maine. Rich will talk with Health Potter of the Nature Conservancy. Patti will talk with Walt Quist about a revised one-page acquisition summary. Jack will get information from Michigan Natural Features Inventory and Michigan Nature Conservancy, and the Ohio River Team regarding their systems. Patti and Leslie may invite one or more of these individuals to the October Ecosystem Team meeting.
Progress will be reported at October Ecosystem Team meeting
2. Increase Island Education and Outreach
While assessment begins and continues, the Committee will undertake some education and outreach activities. One of our goals will be to create virtual opportunities for enjoyment of islands that are too ecologically sensitive to be visited. Our specific commitments are to:
Action: Patti will work with Leslie to brief regional directors on the importance of islands. Progress will be reported at the October GLBET meeting.
Action: We will get a web page with DSS on line this winter. We will discuss how to move this forward and integrate into a conservation strategy work at the October GLBET meeting.
Action: Create a poster or signs to put at key boat landings about the fragile, special nature of the islands and why they are closed to boaters. We will discuss further at the October GLBET meeting.
Other needs discussed include a PowerPoint presentation, video, and fact sheets on the islands. We talked about targeting audiences, finding other NGOs to partner with, and finding help to write, produce, and distribute education and outreach products.
3. Improve Island Conservation
A. Develop a Great Lakes Islands Conservation Strategy
The creation of a Great Lakes Islands Conservation Strategy was one of three consensus recommendations from the 1996 Great Lakes Islands Workshop. To this end, the Island Committee will work with partners and the public in the U.S. and Canada to help draft a basin- wide Great Lakes islands conservation strategy. This strategy will rest on assessment activities described in the next section and on the determination of focus areas. Our committee will undertake the following activities to support the development of the strategy:
i. Identify Island values
We will identify, accumulate, and articulate the natural and cultural values of the islands. This will be an iterative process with values refined and added overtime through dialogue with partners and citizens.
Action: The Island Committee drafted a working list of island values in August 2001 and is attached as Appendix A to this report. This list will be reviewed by full committee October 2001. Once final, the list to be posted on an interactive web page.
ii. Host an Expanded Great Lakes Islands Workshop
The Committee believes that a second Great Lakes Islands Workshop will help move the basinwide islands conservation strategy along. We seek to convene partners in a workshop setting to present and discuss technical papers to serve as a basis to develop a conservation strategy. We will undertake the following actions to further this end:
Action: Rich will identify opportunities and resources to fund a workshop and report at the October Ecosystem Team meeting.
Action: Rich will invite key Great Lakes National Program Office and Great Lakes Protection Fund staff to our October Ecosystem Team meeting, and follow-up after the meeting to determine interest.
Action: We will review existing conservation strategies, such as the Gulf of Maine, as models. A point person needs to be determined.
B. Speed Transfer of Islands to Create Early Success
Conservation of islands will be based on a completing the assessment activities. We discussed the need to layout the various conservation options such as fee-simple purchase or transfer, conservation easements, purchase of development rights, management plans, or other tools, authorities, and resources. In the meantime, we decided to take on-the-ground action to demonstrate a success by taking action to have ownership of islands that we know have high ecological value (i.e., Poverty, Plum, and Pilot islandsCtransferred to USFWS).
Action: Identify obstacles to the transfer of Pilot Island and determine a way to work through them. Patti and the Ecological Services office will draft a letter to Hartwig for Jim Hudgins to sign and ask that he take action. They will update us at October Ecosystem Team meeting.
Action: Get islands higher on the coast guard list. Mike will call Coast Guard and BLM to see where islands stand. He will update us at October Ecosystem Team meeting.
Action: See if Region 5 has an island that they know they want that the Committee can help move forward. We need to identify point person to contact Region 5 October Ecosystem Team meeting if this has not been done.
C. Create list of Colonial Waterbird management actions
The Committee feels that we need to identify a list of colonial waterbird management actions. Specifically, we need to create habitat and visitation management plans including dog control and use of fences, and to work with partners to create islands for colonial waterbirds.
Action: Mike will provide list(s) at the October Ecosystem Team meeting and Rich will look into an intranet site to post this information.
Action: We will continue to work with the East Lansing permits office to identify Aclean@ dredge spoils sites to create islands in, for example, the St. Marys River.
References
Carlquist, Sherwin. 1974. Island biology. First ed. New York: Columbia University Press.
Crispin, Susan. 1998. The global significance of Great Lakes islands. In State of the Great Lakes Islands Report, edited by K. E. Vigmostad. East Lansing, MI: Department of Resource Development, Michigan State University.
McEachern, John, and Edward L. Towle. 1974. Ecological guidelines for island development. First ed, IUCN Publications New Series No. 30. Morges, Switzerland: International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.
Meffe, Gary K., and C. Ronald Carroll, eds. 1994. Principles of Conservation Biology. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, Inc.
Quammen, David. 1997. The song of the Dodo: Island biogeography in an age of extinctions. New York, New York: Simon and Shuster.
Soule, Judith D. 1993. Biodiversity of Michigan's Great Lakes islands: Knowledge, threats, protection. Lansing, MI: Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
Soule, Judith D. 1998. Biodiversity of Michigan's Great Lakes islands: Knowledge, threat, protection. In State of the Great Lakes islands report, edited by K. E. Vigmostad. East Lansing, MI: Department of Resource Development, Michigan State University.
Udall, Stewart L. 1963. The quiet crisis. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.
Vigmostad, Karen E. 1998. State of the Great Lakes islands. Paper read at State of the Great Lakes Islands Workshop, August 18-20, 1996, at Roscommon, Michigan.
Weiner, Jonathan. 1994. The beak of the finch: A story of evolution in our time. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Wilson, E. O., and F. M. Peter, eds. 1988. Biodiversity. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Appendix: Values of the Islands of the Great Lakes
Uniqueness of all islands:
- Sensitive
- Vulnerable
- Tendency toward endemic species
- Tendency toward dwarfism and giantism
- Diversity inherent to dynamic edge communities
- Lack of mammalian predators (except where introduced)
- Shoals and fish nurseries
- Corridors, pathways, and stopovers for birds, wildlife, and plants
Uniqueness of Great Lakes islands:
- Among the last wildlands on Earth
- Biodiversity banks
- Home to higher than expected incidents of endangered and threatened species
- Only sources of several avian species such as common and caspian terns
- Often pristine conditions due to less demand of a northern climate and high cost of island development
- International and binational links and values
- Opportunity to study how to survive as an island society with clear limits and inescapable boundaries
- Learn to feel and experience isolation and solitude of Aisland@ with only escape is a boat
- Opportunities to explore like a pioneer
- Spiritual experience
- Sacred lands rich with legends to Native Americans
- Experience our connections to the Along now@ of natural, Native, and Euroamerican history
- Interesting and unusual geology
- Hold important cultural resources: lighthouses, early farmlands and lumberyards, landing sites of explorers
- Charismatic, magical appeal similar to the Alaska wilderness
- Escape from noise, lights, crowds, trash, and pollution
- Rare research opportunities of islands as the Acanaries@ to study and monitor ecosystem health and site to experiment with high tech applications
- Vital educationalopportunities as wilderness backpacking and natural heritage sites
Negative values:
- cormorants;
- biting flies
- exposure to potential disease from droppings of colonial waterbirds
- abandoned sites of environmental contamination and decaying buildings
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