Lower Great Lakes Plain
(Area - 4,770,500 ha)
Description - The Lower Great Lakes Plain covers the
low-lying areas to the south of Lake Ontario in New York and to the north of Lake Erie in
southernmost Ontario in Canada. In addition to important lakeshore habitats and associated
wetlands, this region was originally covered with a mixture of oak-hickory, northern
hardwood, and mixed-coniferous forests. The Carolinian Forest element in Ontario harbors
ecological communities, including bird species, that are considered unique and rare in
Canada. Unlike in most physiographic areas in the Northeast U.S., roughly 74% of the land
area is in agricultural production. In addition, several medium-sized cities (Syracuse,
Rochester, Buffalo, Windsor, etc) comprise over 800,000 acres of urban land, or 7.1% of
the physiographic area. Several important National Wildlife Refuges, including Montezuma,
protect critical wetlands and associated bottomland forests in New York, and Pt. Pelee
National Park and several provincial parks are important areas in Ontario.
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Conservation recommendations and needs - Changing agricultural practices and urbanization are major conservation issues in this region. In particular, decline of dairy farming and conversion to cropland is detrimental to important grassland species such as Henslow's Sparrow. Agricultural abandonment may temporarily favor shrub-nesting species, such as Golden-winged Warbler, but increasingly agricultural land is being lost to urbanization. In addition, whereas this region was a stronghold for Golden-winged Warblers in recent decades, rapidly expanding Blue-winged Warblers have largely pushed the Golden-wingeds further to the north.
Remaining forest tracts in this area are extremely
valuable to Cerulean Warblers, which also have expanded into the region in recent decades.
Many of these forests are associated with wetland systems along the Erie Canal system or
Great lakes shorelines. In Canada, the Carolinian forest is a high national conservation
priority. This physiographic area also is extremely important to stopover migrants,
attracting some of the largest concentrations of migrant passerines, hawks, shorebirds,
and waterbirds in eastern North America. Much of these concentrations are along threatened
lakeshore habitats. Specific conservation recommendations for this physiographic area
include:
• intensive survey and monitoring for high-priority species to identify most important areas in need of protection;
• increased protection of forest and lakeshore habitats critical to Cerulean Warblers and migrant passerines;
• increased management on protected and private lands to provide habitat for Henslow's Sparrow and Golden-winged Warbler;
• integration of land bird population and habitat objectives with those for wetland species and game species such as American Woodcock.
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