Here are some acronyms we created for the project:

The quality of the environment both natural and man-made, around our 3 towns and everywhere, is very important to sustaining our tourism. Tourism's relationship with the environment is really complicated. Many of our local activities can have terrible effects on our environment like boating, marinas, feeding the birds off the pier, garbage laying around from the tourists, swimmers using the water as a washroom, cutting trees for roads to reach ski resorts and for ski slopes, and even to breathing in the glow worm caves. Many of these impacts are linked with the construction of such things as roads, harbours and airports, and of tourism facilities including resorts, hotels, restaurants, shops, golf courses and marinas. The negative impacts of tourism development can slowly destroy the environment that it needs to keep going. It can change our values and behavior by putting the need for more money ahead of our value of a clean environment. We can also get lazy and just dump things instead of putting garbage in the proper container and by recycling as much as we can.

On the other hand, tourism can create beneficial effects on the environment by helping to protect and conserve the environment. It is a way to raise awareness of what we value in our environment and it can be a way to pay for upkeeping our natural areas and help our towns make more money. Tourism can also generate good things like pride in our traditions, helping to create local jobs, and avoiding families moving to the cities. Many summer jobs are created from tourists visiting our towns.

If Port Dover lost its beach or the lake became very polluted, the town would lose a lot of its businesses. In the summer, tourists would go other places if there were no beach. The street down to the lake is close to lake level. If the lake flooded, many businesses would go under. If the lake became polluted, all the fish would die. With no fish in Lake Erie, there would be no jobs for the fishermen and no perch for the restaurants to cook. If less tourists visited, Port Dover would not need so many gift and clothing stores. Hotels, motels, cottages, as well as bed in breakfast, would be empty. We would not need the lighthouse, the coast guard, or the lift bridge because there wouldn't be any fishing boats. If storms ravaged us, people wouldn't come. Port Dover would become a lot smaller. A lot of our future depends on the environment.

To date, 161 exotic species have arrived in our lakes.

A Zebra mussel is a fingernail-sized mollusk that is native to the Caspian Seas. Its species has now spread to thousands of inland lakes including the Great Lakes. A female Zebra mussel can produce up to a million eggs per year. Zebra mussels have been found in Great Lakes such as Lake Erie and in densities as high as a million per square metre.

What will happen if the mussels take over all the fish-spawning areas and the fish die off?

What will happen to Port Dover?

Will our town die off ?

There is another kind of mussel and it is called the Quagga Mussel. This mussel is a larger cousin of the Zebra mussel. It, like the Zebra mussel, can tolerate a wide range of environments. It spreads with astonishing speed. It, too, filters plankton from the surrounding water and deposits waste onto the lake bottom where it accumulates large clumps. The Quagga mussel unlike the Zebra mussel can cling to both soft and hard surfaces and can live in larger depth. Both of these mussels are on the unwanted list for invasive species in our Great Lakes.

On Friday the 13th, there are a lot of bikers in Port Dover. The bikers throw a lot of garage in the garage cans and on the ground. The smoke from the thousands of bikes goes in the air and we breathe in the polluted air.

In October, West Virginia has its Bridge Day. Thousands of tourists dump their garbage, too. What to do with all this garbage is the question.

On July 1st, there is a big parade. At the end of the parade, they give out ice cream. People eat the ice cream and throw the wrapper on the ground. Sometimes, I go to the pier and the motor boats drive past. Sometimes they are loud, sometimes they smell, and sometimes they leak oil. The other day we went skiing. The hill was called a drumlin. Part of the hill was made out of a restored garage pit. That sounds like a neat idea for an old garage dump. Maybe we can find a good use for the ones around our towns.

To maintain the beauty of West Virginia's mountains, the state has an interesting solution to the problem of strip-mined coal. Once the coal has been stripped from the mountain sides, the coal companies, by law, are responsible for reclaiming the mountain sides. That means they have to put the mountain back to near its natural state. Reclaiming the land means that the mountains of West Virginia can be as beautiful as they were before mining. Some sites have even been known to reclaim the land well enough that nobody knows that it once was a strip mining site. West Virginians realize that we must keep our environment as beautiful and clean as we can.

Deforestation and introduced species seriously impact on the ecology of a community. It is very important to ensure that these eco-systems are maintained. That is why the students at Waitomo Caves have been actively involved in bat monitoring and tree planting. Data gathered from bat monitoring helps the conservation authorities plan and protect the future of these creatures. The planting of trees along the Waitomo Stream helps bring insects close to the main glow worm cave entry which in turn provides more food for glow worms.

Return to our Brainstorming

Info by Kelsey, Cooper & Dalton - Canada
Acronyms from students at Maxwell Hill Gifted Center
Info, proofreading and editing - West Virginia, Team New Zealand