The MNRF has scheduled a meeting on June 29th with the ELCA which will be a supported and joined by Doug Wellman, President of both the Anstruther Lake Association and the North Kawartha Lakes Association, at which meeting this petition will be submitted to the Ministry underscoring widespread support for retaining Eels Lake's winter sanctuary designation.

We, the undersigned cottagers and members of the Eels Lake Cottagers Association, wish to express our strong objection to the Ministry’s “landscape” plan to remove Eels Lake’s winter sanctuary designation during the still early years of our joint lake trout rehabilitation program that shows initial evidence of being successful.

We request that the MNRF, in accordance with your own draft Fisheries Management Plan recommendations, conduct this summer a creel census that will confirm that if ice fishing on Eels Lake is reopened lake trout, not walleye, will undoubtedly be caught damaging if not destroying over time our naturally reproducing lake trout population, as inevitably took place in the 1990s prior to the initiation of our rehabilitation program.

Walleye, being a non-native fish species to Eels Lake, having entered our lake over 20 years ago from another waterbody, have not spawned and are no longer available for winter harvesting despite your ministry’s published view that walleye will attract winter anglers to Eels Lake.

Over a dozen local anglers who wish to preserve our winter sanctuary designation have informed the the ELCA that they have no interest whatsoever in ice fishing given that the only species available, legally, to be caught are panfish and they wish to preserve and avoid catching lake trout.

Please conduct, as recommended in your own draft Fisheries Management Plan, a creel census this summer and take the responsible approach in maintaining Eels Lake’s winter sanctuary designation.