It’s the height of the tourist season in the Lakes Region, and the lakes are crowded with boaters, some of whom are disregarding mandatory “no wake” zones within 200 feet of shoreline. As a result, some residents are voicing concern.

“There are two issues here,” said Peter Lowell, executive director of the Lakes Environmental Association. “Boaters who travel too close to shore are harassing wildlife, and people who ride around at medium speed create these horrendous wakes that are damaging to the shoreline, and it’s an issue of the wakes themselves. If they’re beyond the 200-foot zone, they can still create wakes that hit the shoreline. They don’t know about headway speed-it’s just driver inexperience.”

According to Melissa Ingalls, a resident of Zakelo Island on Long Lake, boat traffic has gotten “increasingly out of hand” in the past few years.

In an e-mail to Sue Gallo, a wildlife biologist at Maine Audubon, Ingalls recalls an incident when her ex-husband was water skiing on Long Lake and fell in the water. A boat traveling at “excessive speed” with its bow rising too high for its operator to see below the bow was about to collide with him.

“If it weren’t for the quick thinking of my father who had the sense to cut off the other boat with our boat, my ex-husband would have been hit,” she said.

The impact of boats operating too close to the shore is also hurting local wildlife, according to Ingall’s neighbor, Carol Curtis, who said she found a dead loon, barely an adult, with its head missing.

“If it was a natural predator, I would assume that more of it would be gone. Boat traffic has increased dramatically over the past couple of years… Our properties are on a protected cove. There are herrings, loons and geese, and it’s not a wide spance of water. A lot of people like to water ski there because it’s a sheltered spot. They’re just not mindful. It’s very sad,” she said.

John Manoush, a member of the Sebago Water Safety Watch, a citizen group of concerned residents on Sebago Lake, has applied for a grant to publish a “concise, readable rule book” for boaters on the lake.

“There’s no one solution,” he said. “It’s a combination of things. We don’t try to change the laws. We feel the laws are adequate. But they need to be enforced… a lot of these boats are operating too close to the shore.”

Manoush recommends to residents in the Lakes Region to report all illegal activity, such as boats traveling at head speed within 200 feet of the shore, to the Maine Warden Service, which shares dispatch services with the Maine State Police in Gray.

Because of the amount of boat traffic in the Lakes Region, the warden service is stretched thin “to the breaking point,” according to Neal Wykes, the district game warden.

According to Wykes, the warden service has a hard time keeping up with all the activity on the lakes.

“It’s a problem every year. The complaints I’ve been getting are Jet Ski-related. They tend to be more reckless than boaters,” he said.

Jason Luce, a game warden in Cumberland County, said on Tuesday he was the only warden on duty in the county.

“Unfortunately, with boating, a lot of people don’t know the rules of navigation. We expect people to know the rules. We require young people to take hunting safety courses, and I don’t see why we can’t do the same with boating. I teach a class and there’s always a low attendance,” he said.

Luce said he never heard of boat wakes affecting wildlife, pointing out that complaints of boating violations as well as traffic has lessened this year, although he admitted to the warden service being unable to cover such a wide area as Cumberland County.

Though the warden service is the primary agency that deals with these types of violations, local municipalities are working together with the state to rein in those who break the law and make the waters safer.

For instance, the town of Naples has its own harbormaster, and the town of Raymond supplies it’s own patrol boat to an officer of the Frye Island Police Department. Captain Dana Wessling patrols the waters for both towns, constituting a cooperative effort that helps to alleviate some of the burden of the warden service.

“This type of activity definitely helps,” said Wykes. “It’s a beneficial asset to us.”

As for the boaters who continue to break the law and endanger both people and local wildlife, Wykes warns, “they have to be aware that they’re not the only ones on the lake.”

Making waves: boats on Sebago and surrounding lakes are concerning some residents as boaters frequently violate the 200-foot, no wake zone from the shoreline.

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