Sunday's Water Lettuce Roundup on Brice Prairie

Date: 10/12/2015 04:03 PM
From: Fritz <fritz@funk.io>
To: Participating Natural Resource Agencies and Volunteers

Many thanks to all who gave up their Sunday and pitched in to help, told their friends, loaned equipment or helped out in any other way with the water lettuce roundup!

I think Lake Onalaska just dodged a very big bullet, which would never have happened without all of your combined efforts.  THANK YOU!!!

We were able to cover the target area of the exposed Brice Prairie shore and more, right up to the source of the infestation. 
The source was a garden pond up by the "tubes", it was illegal, and law enforcement is involved.  More will be forthcoming on that later from official sources.

This morning the celery/duckweed "plug" that had been containing most of the lettuce behind the Brice Prairie barrier island blew out in the wind, and the wild rice beds are being raked over pretty hard by the wind.  If we didn't get it all, our efforts certainly prevented a massive release out into Lake Onalaska and the Mississippi River.

The early morning winds were onshore for awhile, and allowed me to survey and collect from the Fred Funk landing all the way down to Red Pines under excellent viewing conditions.  The aquatic vegetation has been compressed to a narrow band in the nearshore by the wind, but not yet piled deep, so the water lettuce was still floating to the surface.  I feel confident I got almost every single remaining plant in that one drift down the shore. 

Please keep monitoring for water lettuce if you are able to!  Please let agency folks (Tim Miller and Kendra Niemec from FWS, and Shawn Giblin from DNR) and this list know if you are finding some and where you are finding it so we can all keep our efforts focused. 

If anybody got photos of the roundup, can you send them to me?  One photo is below.  The only other ones I have are posted at:

http://www.lakeonalaska.org/invasive_species.html

Thanks again!   --Fritz Funk