New Tool To be Used In The Battle Against Curly Leaf Pond Weed
New Tool To be Used In The Battle Against Curly Leaf Pond Weed
November 18, 2021Steve Schwaller
(Orleans)– There’s a new tool in the tool box for treating curly leaf pond weed. Mike Hawkins, a fisheries biologist with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, says they’ll be trying a new herbicide, called “Sonar”, on the north bay of East Lake Okoboji yet this fall…
“It’s labeled for use in drinking water, in swimming areas, fishing. There are no restrictions for those types of activities and so. The product does stop the plant from producing food. It blocks pigment production and actually causes the plant to starve. You need about a 60 day treatment, at least, for the herbicide to take affect. We’re going to be concentrating on the north bay just north of Highway 9 and doing that treatment, and that treatment will be going on very soon and we will be monitoring that concentration over the next few months. Hopefully as the plant is already germinated, the native plants have died back, so this herbicide won’t affect those native plants, the herbicide will actually just impact curly leaf pond weed that’s germinated and just a small plant at this point near the bottom of the lake. The real hope here is that if we can do this for a couple of years, we actually can reduce the turion density in that area and maybe get to a point where we wouldn’t have to treat the curly leaf pond weed.”
Hawkins says, however, the herbicide is only effective in low flow areas, so he says that will limit where it can be applied…
“When we get into the larger lake systems or the south bay of East Okoboji, that becomes more problematic just from a cost perspective and trying to maintain that concentration, so that’s going to be a lot tougher. So there’s definitely some limitations, Steve, on the places that we could use it, but the way the lake is kind of laid out here on the north side where we have those constrictions at the bridges and the narrows, that may give us enough ability to maintain our concentrations long enough.”
Hawkins says they’ll continue using the same mitigation strategies as in the past for the other areas that are affected.
