Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Lovewell Pond Escapes Invasive Aquatic Plants
Roberta Scruggs
(page 1 of 2)
Despite the current economic gloom, an investment Mainers made eight years ago paid off big last week. Cyndi Broyer prevented the seed pod of a water chestnut, a terribly invasive aquatic plant, from getting into Lovewell Pond in Fryeburg.“My find on Saturday made me feel victorious and horrified, simultaneously,” Broyer said.
The fact that Cyndi Broyer was standing on that boat launch to ttake that seed pod off a Massachusetts boat trailer was a victory for those who care about Maine’s lakes, a testament to the power of public awareness and big boost for everyone who believes in the motto of Captain Jason Nesmith, the egomaniacal star of the 1999 movie Galaxy Quest. “Never give up, never surrender.”
This great “catch” was of water chestnut, but Mainers tend to lump all invasive plants under one word: Milfoil. Eight years ago most of us had never heard that word, but now it’s a battle cry for the lonely, costly and sometimes thrilling battle against invasive aquatic plants.
I believe I witnessed the turning point in that battle in mid March 2000 at a public hearing on Rep. Rich Thompson’s bill to impose the state’s first penalties for importing milfoil. Frank Pitcher, a retired lawyer from away (Maryland, I think), stood up to speak. He had a house on Pocasset Lake in Wayne and he was clearly exasperated that we didn’t realize milfoil was, as he put it, “the worst natural disaster Maine has ever faced.”
“It looks like a thick green net,” Pitcher told us. “It comes up to the surface and crawls around. It’s thick enough for a mouse to run across it. You can’t swim in it. You can’t boat in it. You can’t paddle a canoe in it … The first milfoil I see in my lake, I’m selling the house and moving to saltwater. Why come to a lake if it’s choked with this stuff?”
The image of a plant “thick enough for a mouse to run across” captured everyone’s attention, just as it does today when I train courtesy boat inspectors across the state as part of my work for the Lakes Environmental Association in Bridgton. Like most invasives, milfoil can spread quickly. It reproduces primarily through fragmentation, meaning a lake can be infested from a single plant fragment The most common means of transmission are people, who carry fragments from one lake to another on boats, motors, trailers and equipment.
In 2000, variable leaf milfoil had been spotted in just a handful of Maine waters, including Cushman Pond in Lovell, Thompson Lake in Oxford, Sebago Lake and its tributaries. Now it’s documented in 25 waters and three more waters contain other invasives, Eurasian milfoil, curly-leaved pondweed and hydrilla. (www.maine.gov/dep/blwq/topic/invasives/doc.htm)
Posted on Tuesday, August 5, 2008 in Permalink
