Fort Erie Creeks Watershed Plan - Niagara Peninsula Conservation ...

subwatersheds, many of the forest patches are separated from others by relatively small
intrusions.
Interior Forest: Interior forest greater than 100 m and 200 m from the forest edge is mapped in
Figure NH 6. Only Kraft Drain meets the 10% interior forest (>100 m) minimum guideline. If,
however, rural roads and hydro corridors are not considered forest edge, Baker Creek also meets
the 10% guideline and approaches the 5% minimum guideline for area greater than 200 m from
the edge. Frenchman’s Creek and Miller Creek subwatersheds exhibit moderate amounts of
interior forest. Disregarding the Fort Erie subwatershed where there is no interior forest, the
lowest interior forest percentages occur in Beaver Creek, Lakeshore and Six Mile Creek
subwatersheds. Lakeshore subwatershed’s percentage would improve significantly, especially
for interior greater than 100 m from the edge, if roads are not counted as edge. Bertie Bay
Drains and Niagara River Shore, although approaching the study area’s average interior
percentage for greater than 100 m from the edge, fare poorly for percentage of area greater than
200 m.
Distance to the Nearest Woodlot: The entire study area meets the minimum guideline of all
forest patches being within 2 km. Many species, however, need closer proximity for successive
migration, colonization and on-going population health. The Core Natural Heritage Map of the
Region, municipal draft OP’s, Land Care Niagara (1998) and the Natural Areas Inventory
propose corridor systems. The most complete existing corridors occur between the QEW and the
Niagara River through Lower Frenchman’s Creek, Miller Creek and Baker Creek subwatersheds.
Beaver Creek valley lands are also very well connected. Proposed corridors with significant
current gaps occur in the subwatersheds flowing into Lake Erie and some of the rural headwaters
links both among study area subwatersheds and beyond.
Riparian Buffer: Baker Creek, Bertie Bay Drains and Kraft Drain subwatershed stream systems
exceed the minimum guideline of 75% natural riparian buffers within 30 m of the streams. All
but Black Creek and Lakeshore streams exceed 50%. Overall, the study area has 53.8% natural
riparian cover.
Natural Area With Slough Mosaic: The subwatersheds with the highest proportion of their
natural area containing slough mosaic are Black Creek and the broad corridor of Frenchman’s,
Miller and Baker Creeks. Although Environment Canada (2004a) offers no guidelines, a target
consistent with natural landscape functioning could be the proportion of natural area originally
containing the slough mosaic (for estimates, see Table 2.6.7 Original Slough Mosaic column).
No subwatershed approaches their original proportion, an indication of the widespread levelling
that has occurred even under the regenerating natural areas. For the whole study area, the current
proportion of 6.8% of the natural area containing slough mosaic units is far lower than the 42.2%
estimate for original conditions.
Issues
The Regional and Municipal Official Plans protect the extent of much of the natural area from
development. Among development issues, particular concern applies to lakeshore development.
Fort Erie’s shoreline vegetation communities of dunes, coastal marshes, prairie meadow marsh
and tallgrass prairie are extremely significant, some rated as very rare globally (Dougan and
March 2008 72 Fort Erie Creeks Watershed Plan
General Report (105116)