Invasive Plant Patrollers trained by the Maine Volunteer Lake Monitoring Program are once again credited with helping to save a lake from aquatic invaders.
On October 5, 2010, the Maine DEP announced that Pleasant Lake in Casco, which was once infested with variable-leaf milfoil, is now free of this invasive plant for the third consecutive year, permitting environmental officials to officially remove the lake from the state roster of 34 infested waterbodies.
Variable milfoil was first confirmed in the outlet cove of Pleasant Lake and nearby Lily Brook in 2001. Once the infestations were confirmed, the Pleasant Lake/Parker Pond Association sprang into action. Led by Joel Bloom (recently deceased) with Lew Wetzel, Pixie Williams, Fred Cummings, and Trevar Tidd, a methodical, multi-year, community-based campaign to control the infestation in Pleasant Lake and nearby Lily Brook was mounted. Large patches of milfoil were deprived of sunlight with the use of weighted mats called benthic barriers; individual plants were carefully removed by hand.
Years of hard, painstaking work and dogged determination have paid off at last: Pleasant Lake has been officially declared free of variable-leaf milfoil, and control efforts in Lily Brook seem to be edging close to a similar happy end. In the process, the volunteers taking part in this effort have added greatly to our knowledge of what works and what doesn’t, and have helped to improve existing control methods and technology. It was Mr. Tidd, for example, who invented the now popular, small-scale “clamshell” benthic barrier.
Only one other Maine waterbody, Great East Lake of Acton, Maine and Wakefield New Hampshire, has been officially removed from the state list of known infestations. In that case, a single, newly established variable milfoil plant was properly removed soon after it was detected by trained volunteers.
In both of these cases—Pleasant Lake and Great East Lake—VLMP trained Invasive Plant Patrollers played critical roles in the actions and events that eventually led to the delisting.
This year, only a handful of variable milfoil plants have been found in nearby Lily Brook (also in Casco), leading local project leaders to speculate that the brook may very well be among the next bodies of water to be removed from the ranks of infested lakes. Other infested Maine lakes that appear to be close to winning the battle against variable milfoil as the result of concerted volunteer action include Cushman Pond in Lovell and Middle Range Pond in Poland. So please stay tuned!
To learn more about how you can get involved in the volunteer effort to protect Maine Lakes from aquatic invaders, please visit these websites:
Maine Dept. of Environmental Protection
www.maine.gov/dep/blwq/topic/invasives
Maine Volunteer Lake Monitoring Program
www.MaineVolunteerLakeMonitors.org
Maine Volunteer Lake Monitoring Program
vlmp@mainevlmp.org
24 Maple Hill Road, Auburn, ME 04210
(207) 783-7733
www.MaineVolunteerLakeMonitors.org
copyright 2010 Maine Volunteer Lake Monitoring Program | website comments to: vlmp@mainevlmp.org
