East Sister Island is a 15 hectare

island An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

, Canada, located within

Lake Erie Lake Erie ( "eerie") is the fourth largest lake by surface area of the five Great Lakes in North America and the eleventh-largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and therefore also has t ...

. It has no long-term human population and is maintained as a Provincial Nature Reserve. The island is part of the Pelee Archipelago which also includes

West Sister Island West Sister Island is an island of the U.S. state of Ohio located in the Western Basin of Lake Erie. The island, jointly owned by the United States Coast Guard and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is Ohio's only designated Wilderness Area, th ...

(in

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

, USA) and

Middle Sister Island Middle Sister Island is a island in Lake Erie. Along with West Sister Island (in Ohio, USA) and East Sister Island, it is part of the Pelee Archipelago in the western basin of Lake Erie, and is considered to be the "most natural and undisturbe ...

Flora and fauna

The island has become the home of a breeding colony of

double-crested cormorants The double-crested cormorant (''Nannopterum auritum'') is a member of the cormorant family of water birds. It is found near rivers and lakes, and in coastal areas, and is widely distributed across North America, from the Aleutian Islands in Alas ...

. Their droppings have threatened the forest, a relict of

Carolinian forest The Carolinian forest refers to a life zone in eastern North America characterized primarily by the predominance of deciduous (broad-leaf) forest. The term "Carolinian", which is most commonly used in Canada, refers to the deciduous forests which ...

in southern Ontario. The forests of the island are dominated by the

common hackberry ''Celtis occidentalis'', commonly known as the common hackberry, is a large deciduous tree native to North America. It is also known as the nettletree, sugarberry, beaverwood, northern hackberry, and American hackberry. It is a moderately long-l ...

and

Kentucky coffeetree The Kentucky coffeetree (''Gymnocladus dioicus''), also known as American coffee berry, Kentucky mahogany, nicker tree, and stump tree, is a tree in the subfamily Caesalpinioideae of the legume family Fabaceae, native to the Midwest, Upper South ...

. Unusual species on the island include the

wild hyacinth Wild hyacinth may refer to: *''Hyacinthoides non-scripta'', a European species also called the common bluebell *''Camassia'', a genus of six North American species *''Dipterostemon capitatus'', a species from North America, the only species in the g ...

and the Lake Erie water snake,

Nerodia sipedon insularum The Lake Erie watersnake (''Nerodia sipedon insularum''), a subspecies of the common watersnake, is a nonvenomous natricine snake. It is found on the offshore islands of Western Lake Erie, as well as the mainland of Ottawa County, Ohio. In 1999 ...

References

{{Lake Erie Islands , state=autocollapse Landforms of Essex County, Ontario Uninhabited islands of Ontario Nature reserves in Ontario Islands of Lake Erie in Ontario Protected areas of Essex County, Ontario Lake islands of Ontario