(Spirit Lake)-Community First Broadcasting is launching the Protect Our Lakes Campaign in partnership with area businesses, nonprofit groups and The Iowa DNR, in an effort to create awareness of the threat Eurasian Watermilfoil poses to The Iowa Great Lakes.
One of the participants is The Millers Bay Conservancy. Board Member David Thoreson says, the invasive species can be easily transported from lake to lake. “Spreading the milfoil is very, very easy from one body of water to another body of water. So, for instance, if you’re anchored in East Lake or Minnewashta or Lower Gar or something in an infected area and you pull up your anchor and it’s not clean, a small fragment can be able to be transported on that anchor. So, if you go anchor in Millers Bay for instance, or Triboji or maybe Emerson Bay, another shallow part of West Lake or go over to Spirit Lake, you can carry that milfoil right over to another lake that’s not infected. That’s the great challenge that we face right now.”
He adds that the species could do serious harm to the Lakes. “The Eurasian Milfoil could literally take root in all our lakes and make them almost unusable. The weed goes from the lake bed all the way to the surface and can grow over 20 feet in height, and if you think about our lakes and depths, especially the smaller lakes like the two Gars and Minnewashta, they would literally be unusable unless you got a harvester out there and cut a path out to the deeper part of the water so the boats could travel under the bridge and out to another body of water. So, that’s kind of what we’re facing. If milfoil gets established here, it would just be devastating to our local economy and all the ways that we love to get outside and use our waters.”
The Protect Our Lakes Campaign will continue throughout the summer. The interviews will be aired on KUOO and posted as podcasts on The Community Tab at exploreokoboji.com
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