For those who don’t like “something unknown” tickling their feet while swimming – those plants growing in the lake were a bit icky. Now they are threatening to take over the lake. Instead of a few lacy fingers at the bottom of the lake, great mats of it are growing and beginning to take over. Milfoil spreads fast, which results in less growth for native flora, less food for some animals and less living habitat for small aquatic creatures. Milfoil mats reduce the oxygen in the water, which can endanger fish and cause unhealthy algae growth.
Research tells me that eurasian milfoil has been a plague to many lakes throughout North America and that numerous attempts to eradicate it have been tried, with varying degrees of success. Our efforts at getting rid of the milfoil around our dock may even be making it worse! Milfoil spreads when small pieces break off and sink to the bottom, there they take root. Aquatic harvesting devices like our big double-rasor-Y-thing may not be productive because it breaks the flora and bits come off and replant themselves elsewhere.
John Detlor has been breaking his back and his wallet trying to fix the problem with the most environmentally friendly and promising method found so far. Weevils. The milfoil weevil only eats eurasian milfoil and is harmless to humans – it could conceivably be the panacea to this plague. When seeding a lake with weevils works (and there is no guarantee), the weevils kill the milfoil colonies step by step, giving indigenous species time to recover. It is certainly worth a try because our beautiful lake will be a stagnant pond of milfoil if we just let it go.
I’ll be contacting John Detlor to see what I can do to help…
cottage environment (alist) 