HANOVER, N.H. — It’s a small campsite tucked among the trees on an island in the Connecticut River — a place for tired canoeists to pitch a tent after a day’s paddle.

To Peter Richardson, it’s much more. Richardson sees the site as an insurance policy for the future of canoeing on the Connecticut.

In the past, canoeists camped wherever the bank looked inviting, and farmers who owned much of the riverfront land usually didn’t mind. That changed as the river became cleaner, causing more people to use it and development along its banks to increase.

“This river is slowly being encroached on by houses and roads and Kmarts,” Richardson said durizng a recent canoe trip on the Connecticut.

The Gilman Island campsite is one of a dozen already built in New Hampshire and Vermont along the river to ensure there always will be places for canoeists to pull ashore. Several more are being built this summer and Richardson hopes to have 20 or more soon.

“The idea is to have a string of campsites that run from where the river is canoeable up by the Canadian border down to the Massachusetts border,” said Richardson, chairman of Vermont’s Connecticut River Watershed Advisory Commission.

Construction of the campsites is one of a number of ways in which public access to waterways in northern New England is being addressed this summer.

The Vermont Water Resources Board is considering banning boats on dozens of the state’s lakes and ponds. Rules being considered would impose daytime and nighttime speed limits, ban Jet Skis on lakes under 300 acres and gasoline-powered boats on lakes where they were not normally used before 1993. High-speed boats would be banned on lakes under 75 acres.

New Hampshire’s Lakes Management Advisory Committee is considering issues including how many boats certain bodies of water can hold, whether the number of boats should be limited and whether swimming areas are adequate.

The study is timely. In New Hampshire, boat registrations have increased by 4,000 over the past four years to 81,500. That doesn’t include nonmotorized boats such as canoes or motor boats registered out of state.

George May of Merrimack, who organizes canoe trips on the Merrimack River, said water sports are the fastest growing segment of recreational sports. He put four trips together when he first began organizing them in the 1980s. This year he plans 17 trips.

“It’s exploding today,” he said.

Dijit Taylor, coordinator of the New Hampshire Rivers Council, said the use of rivers in the state increased dramatically during the late 1980s. That has tapered to a slow, steady increase.

The dangers of this growth are most evident on the Saco River, which begins in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and flows into Maine.

“It’s a floatable river, people go down it in tubes, the water is warm, the sun is bright,” said Taylor.

The river’s pleasant qualities have turned it into a party site, Taylor said.

“I am always pleased when people are using the rivers, but when you have a lot of people that don’t have an outdoor ethic using the river you have to be concerned,” Taylor said.

Richardson said the question before the region shouldn’t be whether there is access to water, but whether the access provides a quality experience.

“I think access isn’t a problem for a car-top boat. It’s more of a problem for trailer boats,” Richardson said.

The goal of increasing access to rivers and other bodies of water is to find allies: people who use a river recreationally will want to protect it, Richardson said.

Jacquie Blewett, a member of the Lakes Management Advisory Council in New Hampshire, said access is improving and the state is adding public boat landings every year.

The committee’s aim is to prevent conflicts between users of power boats, canoeists, swimmers, fishermen and other users, Blewett said. The first step will be to determine each lake’s carrying capacity.

“Water skiers need a very large surface area, whereas a canoeist or swimmers don’t,” she said. “Allowing people to share the same water body without infringing on either person’s space is sometimes difficult to figure out.”

Public involvement will be essential to avoid angry disagreements should the committee decide to impose restrictions. Whether certain types of boats will be limited or other restrictions imposed remains to be seen, she said.

“We are at the beginning of the process,” she said.

In Maine, questions about water access generally have focused on the Atlantic coast.

In 1989, a landmark ruling by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court established the state as one of the few where the public can be barred from using the intertidal zone — the area between high and low tide — for swimming or sunbathing.

The 4-3 ruling capped a five-year fight by property owners along Moody Beach in Wells to keep crowds off the beach in front of their cottages.

The ruling was significant because Maine has a 3,500-mile coast, but only a small fraction of it is publicly owned.