Treatment begins on watermilfoil
The treatment of the Cabinet Gorge and Noxon Rapids reservoirs for Eurasian watermilfoil, an aquatic invasive weed, began last Wednesday just as specialists arrived in Trout Creek for the annual Sanders County Aquatic Weed workshop that took place on Monday.
The treatment of the Cabinet Gorge and Noxon Rapids reservoirs for Eurasian watermilfoil, an aquatic invasive weed, began last Wednesday just as specialists arrived in Trout Creek for the annual Sanders County Aquatic Weed workshop that took place on Monday.
The Eurasian Watermilfoil (EWM) Task Force of Sanders County began treating several small three-acre plots last week as part of the experimental process to see what treatments are effective. The EWM Task Force officially began experimental treatment last year and is continuing trials this season in an attempt to control and eventually eradicate the weed.
"Right now, we are just seeing how effective it is a year later. We treated some plots last year and we haven't done the 52-week after treatment analysis yet, but it looks likes it's doing well," said Heidi Sedivy, Education Coordinator for the EWM Task Force. "We're seeing a lot of native plants there now, but we don't have any concrete data yet."
The weed is currently being treated by a selective herbicide, which is meant to remove the specific plant without harming additional species. According to Kurt Getsinger, Army Engineer and Leader of the Chemical Control and Physiological Processes Team at a Research and Development Center located in Vicksburg, Mississippi, said the selective herbicides have been developing over the past 25 to 30 years.
"It will only affect those plants (invasive and noxious weeds) and then the valuable native plants we want to keep for fish and wildlife habitat are not affected and they grow like there is nothing there," said Getsinger. "You aren't removing all the vegetation and waiting for it to be replaced."
The chemicals being used on the Cabinet Gorge and Noxon Reservoirs have been used by Getsinger's team all over the United States in places such as Michigan, New York, Wisconsin and New Hampshire.
"It's relatively new, but its not an experiment in the sense that we don't know what's going to happen here, we are very confident in the results."
Getsinger said their preliminary results from last year indicated that the herbicides were very selective and removed most of the milfoil and the many populations of native plants in the treated plots were unharmed.
The ideal goal of these treatments is to have a 100 percent kill of the individual weeds, however, some of the weeds are not completely killed in the process and inevitably end up growing back.
"The long term objective is over time to use management techniques that will reduce the infested parts of the lake, the population of the weed species and over time, instead of having hundreds of acres of milfoil, you have ten acres," said Getsinger.
Once the milfoil is reduced the objective will be to try and keep it in check so it no longer spreads.
Montana was the second to last state in United States to have waters infected with watermilfoil. A group has kept an eye out for the weed since 1990. The weed was found in the Noxon and Cabinet Gorge Reservoirs in June of 2007 and the EWM Task Force was formed in November. The weed came from Northern Europe and China. Wyoming is the only state that has yet to find the weed in its waters.
"It's not native so when it comes over here it doesn't have the checks and balances to keep it under control and it just runs rampant and takes over," said Getsinger.
Since the formation of the Task Force, workshops were formed to discuss the weed, treatment options, the ecology of the weed and so on. Specialists, who came from the research and development center in Mississippi and Mississippi State University, came to speak at the workshop on these various topics, along with members of the Task Force.
Getsinger spoke on the selective herbicides used to treat the problem.