Help us stop a 600-foot tower going up where two major flyways meet

A 182.9-metre (600-foot) tower, held up by guy wires and lit at night, is proposed at 1246 Centre Dyke Road on Pelee Island: about the height of a 60-storey building. It is not a cell tower. A U.S.-based trading firm says it would carry its trading data between Chicago and New Jersey. No government has assessed what it would do to the birds and species at risk that depend on the island. This is the wrong place for it.

Why it matters

• Where two flyways meet. Pelee Island lies where the Atlantic and Mississippi flyways meet, on one of the main routes birds use to cross western Lake Erie. It is a globally significant Important Bird Area and a Key Biodiversity Area. The Pelee Island Bird Observatory’s daily counts and banding totalled more than 660,000 birds in 2024 and 2025 alone.
• Height, wires and lights. Communication towers in the United States and Canada are estimated to kill 6.8 million birds a year, and guyed towers have been found to kill about 16 times as many birds as unguyed towers of similar height. This tower is guyed and lit, and three times the height the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recommends.
• Species at risk. The site lies within areas where the federal government maps critical habitat for seven species at risk, including the Blue Racer, a snake found in Canada only on Pelee Island. Ten endangered or threatened bird species breed in the area around the site.
• Never assessed. No government has assessed the tower. The proponent’s own study did not assess bird collisions, and its bird surveys were two counts in June and July 2025, outside migration.
  A different standard across the lake. In the United States, any new tower over 450 feet needs a federal environmental assessment before it can be built.

What we are asking

This tower should not be built here. On 6 October 2026, the Pelee Island Bird Observatory asked the federal government to designate the project for an impact assessment: the process that would examine its effects and the alternatives, including other sites, before any approval. The Impact Assessment Agency of Canada began reviewing the request on 21 October and has asked for comments by Monday 16 November 2026. A decision is due by 19 January 2027.

Add your name, and your own words if you wish: Pelee Island Tower Letter to Minister and IAAC

Your signed letter goes straight by email to the federal Minister of the Environment, Climate Change and Nature, the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, with a copy to the Pelee Island Bird Observatory. Letters may be made public.

Please share this letter with your contacts and on social media.

This is not about the company. It is about the place.