Watershed Conservation Plan - Destination Erie

• Seek protection status for privately owned core forests, especially in areas associated with headwaters,
wetlands, and riparian areas.
• Seek protection status for privately owned forested riparian buffers, especially in watersheds of CWF
streams.
• Encourage municipalities to consider ordinances or other measures to maintain undeveloped vegetated
buffer zones within at least 50-100 feet on either side of all streams, including small headwaters with
watersheds less than 100 acres.
• Support and encourage private landowners to allow unused pastures and open fields alongside streams
to revert to forested condition.
• Support and encourage private landowners that currently allow animals to graze areas immediately
adjacent to stream banks to install fences to protect buffer zones within at least 50–100 feet on either
side of streams, including small headwaters; facilitate land owner participation in CREP and other
similar conservation programs.
• Support and encourage private landowners and producers that currently raise crops to establish
uncultivated vegetated buffer zones around the perimeters of fields, especially in areas next to
drainageways and streams.
• Encourage municipalities to consider ordinances or other measures to minimize development of areas
serving as ground water recharge zones, especially in areas where wells are the primary source of water
for agricultural, commercial, or residential users.
• Seek protection status for privately owned forests or areas reverting to a forested condition in ground
water recharge areas, coordinated with state Source Water Protection program.
• Develop GIS-based models of the Pennsylvania Lake Erie watershed to provide visual demonstrations
of how anticipated climate change scenarios will likely affect aquatic, natural, and coastal resources;
these models are needed to support outreach efforts to promote community-based planning and activity
for mitigation and adaptation.
• Establish stakeholder partnerships for eastern, central, and western thirds of the watershed to facilitate
community involvement and land owner participation in protection initiatives leading to improved
north-south recreational corridors that include as many as our watershed's distinctive aquatic, natural,
and historic resources as possible.
The initiative to carry out protection actions will come from some of the same groups that will likely
be involved in restoration activities, in addition to LERC and other organizations capable of negotiating the
purchase of conservation easements or securing protected lands. A GIS-based model identifying candidate
lands for protection is described in the final sections of chapter 10 and in Appendix D, as well as scoring
system that may be used (or modified) to prioritize properties for use of limited conservation/protection
funding.
The proposed action plan Objectives 9 and 10 (see Table 10.2) suggest long-term community
development activities related to recreational resources and ecotourism, extending beyond the immediate
needs to restore our valuable aquatic and natural resources. Other organizations active in our watershed,
including the DCNR, already have active programs that support long-range planning for these kinds of
facilities. Identifying these objectives as part of the Rivers Conservation Plan serve to emphasize the fact that
the aquatic and natural resources in the plan's focus are also significant economic resources for our
community, and that coordination of actions in advancing both fronts should be encouraged.
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