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Situated within earshot of the helicopter swarms thumping over North America's most famous waterfall, Niagara Glen cradles some of the country's most curious flora and fauna.

Take the endangered Northern Dusky Salamander, which slithers so stealthily in limestone crevices that it took 110 years for naturalists to spot it.

Or the threatened Deerberry shrub, so rare that park officials treat its location like a state secret.

Then there's the boulderer, a sinewy breed of human who spends hours clambering up and over the hundreds of limestone knobs scattered throughout the nature preserve.

Rock climbers without ropes, boulderers have been in the Glen for three decades, but suddenly they've become a species at risk. Earlier this year, a draft land management plan recommended that the Niagara Parks Commission "eliminate bouldering activities in the Niagara Glen."

By labelling the sport "a serious threat to biodiversity within this already environmentally sensitive area," the report has forced boulderers to fight for survival in one of the most acclaimed bouldering sites left on the continent.

For them, being barred them from the Glen is tantamount to being barred from the sport.

"We lose the Glen and we're screwed," said Dan Kelly, a 26-year-old student from the University at Buffalo.

He skipped school and the border last week to conquer some of the nature preserve's famed rocks. "I come up here 50 to 75 times a year. You're driving hours and hours to find anywhere half as good as this."

On a clear, frigid day, shafts of sunlight beamed through the canopy as Mr. Kelly and several other boulderers huffed their way down a craggy trail toward more than 100 popular climbing rocks in the 30-acre Glen. Each has been mapped and given a name: Existentialisimo, Captain Hook and Toy Machine, to name a few.

When boulderers reach one of these rocks — which rise as high as nine metres (almost 30 feet) — they spread out a foam crash mat at the base, don sticky shoes, cover their hands in chalk and scurry up the face. Every route to the top is called a problem. Boulderers puzzle over each problem like chess masters studying a board, before mounting the stone, pulling off a series of choreographed contortions and reaching the top — or "topping out," as they call it.

"It's so much more than throwing your body at a rock," says Jany Mitges, a buff 42-year-old, after blazing up Danzig Boulder several times. "You end up with such an environmental connection to this place."

That connection is too close for an increasing number of park officials across North America. In recent years, boulderers have been banned from several spots in Ontario, including Half-Way Dump in the Bruce Peninsula National Park.

In Niagara Glen, park officials and naturalists have seen a severe decline in the number of plant species since the park was founded 110 years ago, from 900 then to about 400 today.

And the non-stop friction of climbers' bodies against the rare lichens, mosses and other rock-face plants isn't helping matters, they say.

"Climbing and topping out can cause damage to small plants and creatures living around the boulders," says Deborah Whitehouse, executive director of parks for the commission. "It's usually done inadvertently, but over the last 20 years it has definitely had an impact."

The draft land management plan, written by three members of Brock University's tourism and environment department and released in September, was launched to identify threats to biodiversity and recommend strategies for thwarting them. The bouldering ban was the most strongly worded recommendation of all.

"The easiest way to fix something that is not working is to stop that activity outright," said Ms. Whitehouse. "But that may not be the ultimate answer."

Ms. Whitehouse stresses that the draft plan is a "living document" that will change and adapt with time.

Several members of the bouldering community will meet with Ms. Whitehouse over the coming weeks to discuss compromises. There has been talk of requiring climbers to pay for and carry permits, or confine their climbing to the barest rocks.

"Banning is not the solution," says Ms. Mitges, who is one of the region's best-known boulderers and an executive member of the Ontario Access Coalition, a volunteer group that works to keep climbing open in disputed areas. "A lot of people think we are going around ripping out moss and ripping out vegetation. We don't even climb boulders with vegetation on them — that usually means they're unsafe. People think we're hooligans. But that's so far from the truth."

As the dozen or so boulderers moved from rock to rock last week, they picked up litter as they went.

"We see ourselves as stewards here," says one climber, Tony Berlier, as he picked up a discarded juice container. "We have an impact when we walk the trails like anyone else, but we also clean as we go."

That attitude was inspired by former Niagara Parks naturalist Rob Ritchie, who up until his retirement earlier this year often struck up conversations with boulderers and educated them about the fragile nature of the Glen ecosystem.

"They were typically very receptive," says Mr. Ritchie, who would like to see bouldering continue in the park, but in a more controlled way. "If the parks just take a knee-jerk response and say, 'This isn't good for the park, we won't allow it,' then the sport goes underground. You won't have that openness with the climbing community any more."

Earlier this year, park officials negotiated with geocachers to create a policy on the burgeoning sport of geocaching, a form of large-scale treasure-hunting using global positioning system devices The new policy requires geocachers to stay on marked trails and seek authorization before placing caches anywhere in Niagara Parks.

"I could definitely see the same sort of agreement being worked out for the bouldering community," says Mr. Ritchie.

Until such an agreement is signed, boulderers will continue to trumpet their virtues. An online petition has garnered nearly 800 signatures.

"This is the primary bouldering area in this part of the world," says Ms. Mitges. "We can't lose it."

Editor's Note: The version of this story that appeared in Friday's Globe and that appeared earlier online named John Berlier as a rock climber who frequents Niagara Glen. In fact, his name was given incorrectly in the original story and should have read Tony Berlier. The online version of this article has been corrected.