 Lakeland Public Television presents Currents. And welcome to Lakeland Currents, I'm Bethany Wesley. It's now summertime here in the Northwoods, which means droves of tourists and residents alike have been heading to area lakes to fish and recreate out on the water. But these days, a trip to the lake frequently includes a visit with a local watercraft inspector, someone tasked with keeping an eye out for unwanted hitchhikers that could further spread aquatic invasive species throughout Minnesota's waterways. According to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, about 5% of Minnesota's lakes are listed as infested with invasive species. And that number is growing. In August 2016, for example, Starrie Stonewort was found at the Big Turtle Lake Boat Access in Beltrami County. In June, the DNR reported the first new confirmation of zebra mussels in a Minnesota lake in 2017, when an adult zebra mussel was found in Cedar Lake in Wright County. But what exactly does it mean when aquatic invasive species are found? And is there anything that can be done to eradicate them? To answer these questions, and many more, I welcome to the program Nicole Kovar, an invasive species specialist with the Minnesota DNR. Welcome. Thank you. Nice to be here. As we get started first, let's talk about, generally, what exactly aquatic invasive species are. How are they different than just a non-native species? Well, an invasive species is, like you said, a non-native species. But for some reason, they cause a problem. So that's the key in that definition. They cause a problem, whether that's an economic problem, a societal problem to society, or an environmental problem, something that we're dealing with aquatics. So a problem to the lake itself. So that's the two parts there, non-native and causes a problem. And they're both plants and animals. They can be eaten. It can be a plant or an animal. And in fact, it could also be a virus. And within the animal category, falls fishes and things of that nature. So generally speaking, like how many aquatic invasive species are there that are on your radar that you keep an eye open for? Oh, goodness. On the radar. So not in Minnesota. Oh, in Minnesota. Yeah. Let's speak. We have, yeah, we have those two sides. We have on the horizon, which we don't have yet. And we have the ones that we do have. So in general, there would be the biggest ones that we put on the designated infested waters list, being faucet snail, zebra mussel, spiny water flea, Eurasia water mill foil. We do have starry stonewort now, which is an algae, not a plant. So those are the biggest ones in our area. There's also others. And we'll talk about, if you want, a prohibited classification and a regulated classification. Those are some of the prohibited. And then for regulated species, we have things like mystery snails, banded mystery snails, rusty crayfish, curly leaf pineweed. So there are quite a number of aquatic invasive species in our state. And there are others that we don't want either on the horizon than other states have. We know that there are some new ones. You talked about them there on the horizon that could come, some that are relatively new, like starry stonewort. But they've been around for a while, right? I mean, AIS isn't anything new. I mean, they've been coming here for time. Oh, right. In fact, there are starry stonewort. We just had the first infestation in 2000. I've got to get my years right, 2015, in Minnesota, down in Lake Cronus. While actually in the United States, starry stonewort was first documented in 1978 in St. Mark's Seaway. And actually, when they look back to herbarium samples, 1974 was the earliest. So if you think of it in that perspective, as the United States, we've been dealing with invasive species for quite some time. Curly leaf pondweed has been in Minnesota for over 100 years. So it's been here. Just new ones come in. And we're now realizing the impacts of these species that have come in earlier. We're just realizing those impacts now and how important it is to stop any spread. Fair to say it can take years sometimes to see some of the effects that an AIS can have. It could. And it also takes many years to do research on them and study them and compile enough data to understand them as well. So you talk about the ones that are on the horizon. I'm assuming are those places that you've seen, you've seen them in other places that could come to Minnesota? How do they get here? The major route of transport is human activity, fortunately, analyzing the infestations across the United States and across Minnesota. Fish as the S can travel upstream, but the infestations follow highways, if you would. The greatest use lakes, we're getting infested first so you can see like spokes of a wheel to the highest use lakes and then along the highway corridors. The greatest risk is ourselves spreading it around. Are there certain geographical locations that a certain species will do better? Like when you look at the region that you represent, is that do you focus on a different AIS than perhaps somebody might in southeastern Minnesota or are they pretty much the same throughout the state? Well, I wouldn't look at geographical region more than I would look at, say, specific lake conditions. So different lake conditions will be more suitable for a species than another. And there's been risk assessments done by different entities to look at the composition, the chemical composition of the lake and the lake water and the nutrients available to look at, say, for example, zebra mussels, how well they could do in different lakes. And calcium is their limiting factor. And so if there isn't a lot of calcium in a lake, zebra mussels can't grow a shell. So there isn't enough for a high population to grow a shell. So I'd look more at those characteristics than geographic location. Are there some AIS that are more dangerous, that are more threatening perhaps would be a better word? Like a homeowner would certainly not, or a property owner would be upset to hear about a certain one more so than others. Are there more dangerous ones? Well, I don't know if dangerous is what I would use, but I think that they're scarier to people based on information that they've heard or things they've seen happen in other lakes and other places. Zebra mussels is very scary for people. There's information out there that talk about the property values of a home on a lake that has zebra mussels and things like that. And I would say that one would probably be that species that everyone's zebra mussels talking about. And that now starry stonewort is so new to our lake, and we don't know a lot about starry stonewort because there hasn't been a lot of research on starry stonewort in the past. So that's very scary. We don't know how it will react in our lakes. And actually, a species could react very differently in different lakes. So it's unknown and we are all afraid of the unknown. So I would say that those two are probably, we have a handle on species like Eurasian water, malefoil, how to control if an infestation has happened, how to control them with treatment. So that's, for me, the less scary I can get a handle on that one. I want to talk a little bit as we move forward and talk specifically about some of the AS coming, but talk about your role. What is it that you do then? What is an AIS specialist? What is it your job duties? Well, as a program as a whole, we were created to prevent the spread of invasive species across Minnesota, prevent any new infestations of any new species into Minnesota, and then minimize the impacts that those species cause to us. So my job up here, so I'm specific to region one, and the regions are split into two districts. So I'm in the North District of region one. Basically, Whitinga County line, Cass County line up to the borders. All of those counties. And I work on our goals within my district and our region. So prevent the spread around Minnesota, prevent any new and minimize impact. So we work on permitting. There's a permitting system out there for lake associations that do have an infestation. Like I said, get a control and management of that species within their lake. Also a lot of education during the downtime or off season and the winter and fall. There's a lot of going on of presentations and conferences and seminars and water festivals and even a request from an elementary school we go to. So a lot of that going on. And then also this time of the year is when we start doing following up on reports. So we're looking for new infestations. We wanna find them as quickly as possible in order to contain them at the point of infestation. So if a person becomes aware that that lake that they're visiting has something, then they could be even more diligent on what they're supposed to do. So the rest of my summer will most likely be a lot of that. And then looking at story stonewort and treatment options and things like that. Interesting. I wanna touch on those two that we've kind of hit on a little bit, but I just wanna kind of focus on them a little bit more, starting with the zebra mussels themselves. Because we know that they are in various lakes in this region. We know that they're, right, correct me if I'm wrong, Cass Lake Beach Lake. Cass has a verified adult population. There were other lakes designated infested precautionary because of their connectivity to Cass. And that means that they're found in a lake or a waterway that's connected, right? Right. And the water bodies around Cass Lake are highly connected and navigable and there's movement between them. We have had some verification of adults in those connected, a few of those connected waters. Not all. Leech Lake was found with villagers last, well, the samples were taken in the summer as part of our large lake program in Fisheries Department and analyzed later on in the fall when workload permitted. And villagers are? Villagers are a juvenile form of the zebra mussel. Tiny. So the baby zebra mussel. Microscopic. So those two we have around a direct vicinity and then Detroit lakes, to where I'm in Park Rapids, Cass is just as far as Detroit lakes. So I bring that up too. There are very, quite a few lakes in that area that have zebra mussel confirmation. What is it about the zebra mussel that is threatening or that is concerning? What does it do? Well, the zebra mussel itself can, for the impact to the environment, it can filter out that necessary part of the food chain that our natives need to survive. So that lower part of the food chain with plankton. So the zooplankton, it's removing from the food web and the phytoplankton. It's filtering that. It ejects nothing that anything, nothing wants to eat. And then it's removing things that say, our native mussels need to eat. Even larval fishes need to eat that smaller part of the food web. So it's removing that. And then also to humans, it can follow the equipment. It can get into the intakes and motors and basically ruin a motor. The shells are very sharp when broken and like a shard of glass when weight is applied to them, puncture, a foot for sure. Yeah, cause you've heard people who said if they swim where they are, water shoes or something to protect the bottoms of your feet. Yep, and you know, to feel them, I'd say they're about the thickness of your, of a fingernail just to feel. But if you put all your weight down on that and it had an angle on it, you definitely could cut yourself. So there's that problem to beaches and things like that. And then really to the economy and tourism, you know, that is another whole issue there. If a municipal municipality is taking water from a zebra mussel-infested source, they have the issue of cleaning out their lines. You know, if it gets fouled up with zebra mussels and calls millions and millions of dollars to do that. So there's a huge economic issue as well. And then turning our attention to the, we've talked about it a little bit here, but Starrie Stone worked, which is one of the newer ones to Minnesota. What is it about that one in particular that is threatening or what does it do that is caused to pay attention to it? Well, like other aquatic invasive plants, there's a possibility that it could displace natives. So it could colonize a certain area and then no other plants could grow. And the importance is to keep diversity. When you start to decrease diversity, you start to increase the system's inability to buffer itself, to adapt to new things. I liken it to say a forest of all one species of oak and oak will comes in and kills all the oak where you have no forests left. So when you have a multitude of different species, it can buffer itself against those environmental conditions if you want. So there's that. And then there's some anecdotal evidence out there that when it does colonize areas, it is areas where fish like to spawn and have their beds. So it could cover up spawning beds, whether or not that causes some decrease in the fish population as a whole. We don't know that because there isn't enough research on that very one specific topic. So there's possibilities. And also the impact on recreation. So plants such as Eurasian water mill foil and even curly leaf pondweed, they grow to the surface and cause such mats that motors can't get through. It wraps up on the propeller and pretty much ruins fishing if you can't put your line in, you're getting weeds. Swimming is difficult if you're getting caught up in weeds plants. Actually, I tend to stay away from the use of weed because I think of it as a dandelion in your yard. Plant, aquatic plants are good. And we need aquatic plants for the center of our ecosystem. But if it's something you don't want, that's when people start using that word weed. So that's a major thing to us as humans that recreational impact that the plant could cause. So sorry, stonewort, it mats much taller than our native carous because we do have cariacea species in our state. And this is part of that family. So it likes that same habitat, but it can grow much taller and denser. So in shallows, and we've seen it from one to 10 feet, and it can grow up to that depth, whereas our natives would stay shorter at two to three feet. So it's really an issue when you have that amount of matting up to the surface. Does it grow quickly? And then again, not a lot is known. I've watched the plant for two months, I keep saying plant there, it is an algae, sorry, stonewort is a macro algae. So it looks like a vascular plant, but it's actually a combination of cells. So individual cells connected to each other. And it's just like a planktonic algae or blue-green, those are very small algae. This is actually big enough, a macro algae, we can see with it, each cell with a naked eye. But it looks like a plant. It looks like a grassy plant. And I'll say plant a lot because it's a common name, I guess. So, not much is known about it, but last year when it came into our region, I watched it through those two months. And we're starting to watch it and now that it started growing again, we started watching it in June. And again, it's going to depend on environmental conditions, how fast it might grow, nutrient available in whichever lake, a number of things and how fast it could. Even our own climate, precipitation patterns or light availability could influence how fast it grows. But when it does get going, it grows well, let's say, because it starts to create cells and then every one of those cells can create another cell off it. So when you start with one, you multiply and you have two, but then it increases exponentially. Is that what the benefit is then in trying to catch AIS early? Is that there's hopefully less of it? Oh, I would definitely say that's an important piece of early detection. The sooner you can detect it and get a handle on it, the less of it you're going to have to deal with. And that's true for starry stonewort and that would be true. Eurasian water milk was a prime example. We had a lake last year, just found it in their lake and immediately got on it and started to look at chemical treatment of that infestation in order to keep it a manageable size because the more it is, the less likely it is to be able to treat it all or get a handle on it, the more there's left to spread and create new infestations around that lake. So if we could keep it at one acre instead of getting to 250 acres before we start thinking about what to do about it, it would be cost effective and much easier to control. So when a body of water is identified to have a new AIS in it, is the goal always going to be to eradicate? I mean, are there treatments that have proven effective to the point where eradication is potentially an option? Unfortunately, there is no case study proven to eradicate an aquatic invasive species from a lake once it has been infested. I would hope that at any time that we could eradicate and we're not going to stop trying if a new species comes in and we'll give it that try. And once we realize that what we had tried through the attempted, thank you very much, attempted wasn't the best avenue then either we'd step back and look for more options and maybe we combined all our options, maybe we used the best option we thought there was out there at the time. So if that wasn't so successful in eradication and you'd step back, you'd take a look. And also you'd look at how many lakes have that infestation and we can like to talk about starry stonewort in Big Turtle Lake, being that it was the second lake found, well, coronas mud is connected to coronas. So technically the third, but the second in so great a distance from coronas second lake in Minnesota found the starry stonewort, we had to attempt something to get it out of there because we found it at 0.755 acres. We do a survey around the lake to determine if it's localized. And so at that point, it's, you know, there's that slim chance it's possible. You gotta try, you can't not try to do that. So what was the steps that was taken or what were the steps that were taken? Well, that time in our Beltrami County the IAS coordinator had found the infestation there at Big Turtle Lake. And we work in very close partnerships, the counties and everybody involved really, I indirect communication most of the time with our neighboring counties as well. And so you immediately text it and a picture was attached. And at that point it triggers our ready response plan. And what that is is our response. I don't want to say reaction, but response to a possible infestation. And it is immediate identification and then determining whether the infestation is localized or lake-wide has spread around the lake. And with that involves meander surveys around the littoral zone of the lake where plants might grow to determine if we can find anymore. Once we've found it's localized, which we did there at Big Turtle, then we can start to talk about treatment options. So through the whole process, there's communication going on behind the scenes. Emails back and forth, research being collected from Michigan who's been dealing with this species for 10 years or more, Wisconsin, New York, so other places, what they've tried, what worked best, experts around the country and even in Europe where, sorry, somewhere is a native species over in Europe. So there's all that gathering of information until we can formulate some type of treatment moving forward. All right. I want to focus a little bit back up just a second. You talked about some of the partners. There's a lot of different roles, a lot of different people that kind of keep eyes out, help fight AS, raise public awareness. Take us through some of those and how you guys are always communicating because you have the DNR, you have watersheds, lake associations, and now county AAS specialists as well. And I'm sure I'm leaving out dozens other of my apologies. Fill me in. Who else am I missing? Well, and it will depend on what lake, what project, what area, what county, so that it could be a number of different ones. And to give an example, because it's easiest to give an example and big turtles seems to be working well. So there's the Watershed Association. So there's Turtle River Watershed Association. They would become a partner. Because it's in their county, landowner involved, which actually it was at the access. So the landowner was our department. And it was a different division, but our department, it could even be if it was federal land, could be whichever portion of the federal government owns that land. If it's tribal land, it would be the tribe that owns that land there too. So it just would depend where, if there is a lake that has a lake association, then the lake association gets involved. So the number, it could vary and be very different. But it must happen quickly though, in terms of everybody gets involved. Cause you said in Big Turtle Lake, that the Beltrami County AIS individual was the one who located it, correct? But you were alerted to that pretty quickly on then. Oh, within, you know, I'm sure. Moments. You know how cell phones are now, it's immediate. And so it was, and then we found, it's not just Big Turtle in Beltrami County that has it. So I remember being at the access of Big Turtle, dealing with that response. And I believe we were putting in barriers that day. And the area's coordinator through Beltrami County was still looking, and as part of our roles too, and we can skip back to that as part of our roles, he was looking for more, you know, where now, should we check other accesses down the watershed, high use lakes, and I remember standing there getting another text from Bruce with another infestation of Starrie Stonewort. So it is immediate. And back to the partnerships. So it will depend too on which project, who is taking the lead. So there's all this technical expertise out there, but I don't necessarily have the expertise in connecting with all the landowners or the local portion of that. Because I deal with, you know, our county has 21 regions, and I have, I think there's 12 in our district. So I'm dealing with all of those counties. So at the local level, there's a greater connection to that, those landowners, to that partnership, to really even the atmosphere of the local community. So that's huge when you talk about the watershed association or really a watershed district, there could be a lake improvement district, there could be a number of things. So their role helps with education, getting the information out to the affected lake, to setting up meeting places, to the county of permissions for disposal site, if need be, depending on which road it is, if we need permissions along the right-of-way to do any work or have any heavy equipment. So the activity is going on, there's a lot of different roles that someone could fill, and it might not be the DNR taking the lead, and maybe it has to be the county on a project taking the lead, but there's always the DNR expertise role in there, the surveying that would go on ahead of time would always be there and any other help to that nature. Fair to say then, you're also always relying on the public and property owners to keep their eyes open. Oh, and I preach that, if you will, and promote that at any time I talk to a lake association, because I am only two eyes, I'm only one set, and I am only one of me, and I can't be everywhere at once. So the more eyes I have looking, and it only takes one inkling of suspicion and a report, and I can usually identify things off a picture because I'm so familiar with our natives and our invasives. So sometimes something that might not jump out to somebody, but a key feature of a native, and I can rule out any invasive. So it just takes a picture, you'd be amazed at the number of reports that come in that are from young children swimming along public beaches or walking looking for shells, and that's amazing. So when I'm at elementary schools, I really preach, I say, you know, you can help me do my job, and they get all excited, how? So I spend time showing them the pictures for this. So yes, everybody out there can help stop. So I now use the term or the phrase, spread the word, not the species. Just getting that word out there, actually being aware of the issue helps tremendously. Well, I want to thank you for joining us, Nicole, and providing all the information that you have. On the bottom of the screen, you'll see a link to the DNR's website on Aquative Invasive Species, and you can get some more information there as well. Thank you for joining me. Please join me next time on Lake Lincoln Currents.