Deer Creek Marsh Wildlife Management Area is an 1,195-acre (484 ha) New York State Wildlife Management Area (WMA) with a 4,500-foot (1,400 m) sandy beach on the eastern shore of Lake Ontario; it is in the Town of Richland in Oswego County, New York. Deer Creek Marsh lies at the southern limit of a 17-mile long region of sandy barrier beaches that protect coastal lagoons and marshes; the region is unusual geologically and is important as habitat for many species. Deer Creek Marsh WMA is part of the Eastern Lake Ontario Marshes Bird Conservation Area, along with Black Pond and Lakeview WMAs and the Sandy Pond Beach Unique Area. Some of the hiking and boating opportunities in the WMA are described in a brochure and a website created through the New York Sea Grant.
Until 1979, Deer Creek Marsh was divided into a number of privately held properties. The sand that underlies the region was being mined for construction and industrial purposes, and led to concern about the long-term conservation of the area. Efforts by New York State to make conventional purchases of these properties for a WMA were unsuccessful, and in the end the land was obtained through a controversial use of eminent domain.
Within the year, a project to restore the dunes commenced. Debris and unused buildings were removed. The project was partly a response to massive erosion in the region following April 1979 storms. A commission studying this erosion concluded that it was exacerbated by the degraded state of the native beachgrass and other plants along the dunes; beachgrass in particular builds and stabilizes coastal sand dunes. Damaged stands of beachgrass were replanted following some experiments with differing varieties and cultivation methods. These experiments were apparently the foundation for the extensive beachgrass restoration that was subsequently undertaken along the entire length of the eastern Lake Ontario coastal dunes.
Deer Creek Marsh WMA has also been designated a New York Natural Heritage Area.
Famous quotes containing the words deer, creek, wildlife, management and/or area:
“A deer in the body of a woman, living resentfully in the Hollywood zoo.”
—Clare Boothe Luce (1903–1987)
“The only law was that enforced by the Creek Lighthorsemen and the U.S. deputy marshals who paid rare and brief visits; or the “two volumes of common law” that every man carried strapped to his thighs.”
—State of Oklahoma, U.S. relief program (1935-1943)
“Russian forests crash down under the axe, billions of trees are dying, the habitations of animals and birds are layed waste, rivers grow shallow and dry up, marvelous landscapes are disappearing forever.... Man is endowed with creativity in order to multiply that which has been given him; he has not created, but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate is ruined, and the earth is becoming ever poorer and uglier.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“This we take it is the grand characteristic of our age. By our skill in Mechanism, it has come to pass, that in the management of external things we excel all other ages; while in whatever respects the pure moral nature, in true dignity of soul and character, we are perhaps inferior to most civilised ages.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)
“If you meet a sectary, or a hostile partisan, never recognize the dividing lines; but meet on what common ground remains,—if only that the sun shines, and the rain rains for both; the area will widen very fast, and ere you know it the boundary mountains, on which the eye had fastened, have melted into air.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)