Lake Erie Bluffs: A successful modern conservation project

 

Many Northeast Ohioans recognize the value of Lake Erie.
Now they have a park that features this natural wonder
in Lake County’s front yard.

Lake Erie Bluffs is nationally significant: The 600-acre Lake Erie Bluffs property will permanently protect a significant amount of wetland, meadow and mostly undeveloped lakefront habitat used by rare and common plant and animal species.
 
Amazingly, the property remains largely unspoiled by previous development. The mix of 40-foot high beach bluffs and open sandy and cobble beach across 9,000 feet of shoreline are the site’s dominant features. The beach area hosts trees, shrubs and small plants including the majority of the park’s rare plants.



The development of Lake Erie Bluffs was made possible with help from a wide range of committed partners. Working together, this collaborative effort secured more than $10 million in local, state and federal competitive grants and donations to purchase the $11 million property. More than 1.6 miles of undeveloped shoreline and nearly 600 acres of diverse and important natural habitat are now protected by Lake Metroparks thanks to the help of many valuable partners.

 

Over the past several years, Lake Metroparks worked with various local conservation partners to complete a detailed study of the Lake Erie Bluffs site and together they produced a conceptual master plan that illustrated how conservation, recreation and economic development can all be sustained within and around the project area. The shared vision and commitment to promote and integrate the value of conservation efforts within existing local and regional planning groups and agencies was a result of funding from the Cleveland Foundation’s Lake-Geauga Fund.

Visitors will now enjoy low-impact recreational activities such as hiking and fishing at both locations accessible to the public. Improvements made to enhance public use include parking lots, restrooms and installation of gravel trails with a scenic overlooks and a grand access point to a natural beach along Lake Erie at each location.



Lake Erie Bluffs provides public access to Lake Erie and protects habitat used by rare species including:

• Bald eagle • Merlin • White-eyed vireo • Least flycatcher
• Willow flycatcher • Yellow-breasted chat
• Purple sand grass • Fringed gentian • Seaside spurge
• Smallmouth salamander • Hairy-necked tiger beetle
• Various other rare plants

Deer exclosure at Veterans Park

If you have driven past Veterans Park on Hopkins Road recently, you probably have noticed a large fenced area in the woods adjacent to the parking lot. This 10 x 20-meter structure is a deer exclosure, one of seven that are monitored by Lake Metroparks throughout the county. This area was selected after so many of the mature trees were taken down by the devastating winds of Hurricane Sandy.

If you are looking for a white-tailed deer inside the exclosure, you won’t see one. The space is designed to keep deer out to monitor the plants inside versus the plants on the outside. this will provide an index of what the impact of browse is by the white-tailed deer on that plant community.

The deer exclosure will have an important interpretive value to the public as, literally, they will see the structure from the parking lot and learn from it what impact it has on protecting the plant life within.

A small deer herd only makes a small impact, but too many deer consume the seeds of a forest’s future growth. Over time, these impacts create a visible browse line in the forest (see above).

Tom Adair, Parks Services Director, in an interview on the "Around Town" program on Mentor TV, said with the elimination of plant life, we will see a related loss or decrease in the diversity of insect life, bird life and mammal life as it relates to Veterans Park.

"Lake Metroparks has monitored the growth of white trillium in this area over the past 10 to 15 years and we have records that showed us that there were over 1,000 white trillium on a small plot, a 10' x 10' area," said Adair. "That site within the past two to three years has yielded no more than a dozen white trillium."

Plants inside the fenced area at Veterans Park are now protected from deer. Over time, this will show us how a healthy forest in Northeast Ohio can recover.

Click here to watch the video. The deer exclosure is the first segment of the program.