Residents and cottagers on a lake near Penetanguishene don't like what they sometimes see out on the water.
An invasive weed is threatening other plants and wildlife in the lake, but it’s not being ignored.
The leafy plant looks like any other and appears harmless, but it's actually an invasive species called Eurasian Water-Milfoil.
“It's created by human interference,” says Pete Andrews, who discovered the invasive plant two years ago while surveying aquatic plant life on Farlain Lake in Tiny Township.
“It dominates all the native plants, wipes them out and what you're left with is this plant, which can grow 30 feet long and create a huge dense mat on the surface that people can't swim in, can't boat (on),” says Andrews.
According the Ministry of Natural Resources, the plant starves other aquatic plant life of sun light and oxygen. On Farlain Lake, the invasive species has grown in a large cluster measuring some 30 meters by 60 meters. And it’s growing.
Doug Kirk has a cottage on the lake and is the president of the lake association, which is now planning to remove the plant this weekend before it spreads any further.
“We figured we should get at it now, remove it quickly and use a method that will be a permanent solution,” he says.
That solution involves a team of volunteers and commercial divers who will hand-harvest the plant, carefully removing the plant by its root so it doesn't break apart and spread.
“We're preventing the plant from ever growing back,” says Kirk. “You’re basically destroying the plant’s survivability because during the winter all the nutrients are stored in the root.”
Volunteers will pick it up as it’s handed to them and dry the plants out to make sure they die. How the plant arrived in Farlain Lake is still a bit of mystery, but recently it’s been growing in dense clusters and posing a threat in the Great Lakes.
“It travelled in the water ballasts in ships and now is making its way into the Great Lakes,” says Laura Kielek-Caster, who is with the Ministry of Natural Resources.
The MNR is offering a boat wash in Orillia for every boat that travels through Lake Couchiching. Eurasian Water-Milfoil can easily attach to boats and the MNR is trying to prevent the spread.
“Even a small piece attached to a boat can reproduce a whole new population if it gets into another water body,” she says.
Volunteers in Tiny Township are using containment nets to catch the pieces of the plant that may break off while it’s being harvested. The community is confident if the invasive plant isn’t removed now, it will consume the lake.
Once the invasive plant is removed, volunteers will spend the next three years monitoring the lake to see if it returns.
