Silver Lake Management District awards prizes in 7th Grade Drawing Contest

  Silver Lake Management District (SLMD) hosts an annual Aquatic Invasive Species field trip for the 7th grade Science class.  The field trip involves an onshore education session by a volunteer biologist, then an excursion on the lake sampling and identifying aquatic plants along with what is collected in the plankton nets the boats tow.  Typically, 100+ students attend the event.

This year due to COVID-19 all school field trips were cancelled.  The SLMD board discussed and decided to hold a class exercise and drawing contest.  Silver Lake Management district has been managing the invasive aquatic plant Eurasian Hybrid Water Milfoil (EHWM) with DASH (Diver Assisted Suction Harvesting).

DASH has been used with much success since the whole lake chemical treatment in 2016. There is confusion on what DASH is and how harvesting is permitted, so this is a perfect topic for the class essay and pictures.  SLMD awarded $400 to the 7th grade science class for the group essay and $50 for a drawing depicting DASH in operation.  There were so many great pictures, the board chose four (4) winners on the drawings.  Awards were presented by Ross Peterson to the class and essay winners on Oct. 15.

There have been some complaints by local fisherman DASH is ruining the habitat for the fishery, but this is far from the truth.  Silver Lake had a full Point Intercept Study (PIS) on aquatic plant life by our biologists, Onterra on July 23rd.   Five hundred forty DNR GPS locations were sampled in Silver Lake for aquatic plant life.

1).  Silver Lake has a healthy population of native weeds, some 20 different species in all.  Eurasian Hybrid Water Milfoil (EHWM) is less than 2.3% of the lakes Littoral zone.   The amazing fact is there was No Eurasian Hybrid Milfoil found in the lake plant sampling East of Silvercryst through Fox Tail Bay

2). The Diver Assisted Suction Harvesting (DASH) pontoon boat you are observing are 2 divers and a boat operator removing Eurasian Hybrid Milfoil only which is a highly invasive species.

Aquatic Plant Manage-ment was on Silver Lake August and September inspecting all the prior Hybrid Eurasian Milfoil sites (some 37 locations in total)

3). The divers are trained to remove Eurasian Hybrid Water Hybrid Milfoil (EHWM) only.  Divers pull the plants by the roots and it is sucked up via the hose to the pontoon barge and filter plate.  The reason EHWM is vacuumed:  1 strand of floating hybrid Eurasian milfoil can start six (6) new plants.  It spreads at a ratio of 1:6 and will crowd out and choke the good native plant population.

4). The divers are only allowed to remove hybrid Eurasian Milfoil at sights which have been identified where EHWM plant colonies exist.  The sites are marked with GPS coordinates and listed on the WI DNR permit for the DASH EHWM removal.  The divers CANNOT meander thru the lake and pull EHWM from any spot.

Overall, the 7th grade class did a phenomenal job, said Mark Magnusson from the Silver Lake Management District.