Duluth News Tribune:
http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/articles/index.cfm?id=38668&CFID=27016664&CFTOKEN=98823386&jsessionid=883081490cd045331871
Water fleas may prompt Voyageurs restrictions
Lee Bloomquist Duluth News Tribune
Published Wednesday, March 28, 2007
ELY — In an effort to keep out exotic spiny water fleas, Voyageurs National Park officials are considering banning live bait in the park’s smaller lakes and ending float plane and boat visits to those lakes.
The water fleas were found last year in Rainy and Namakan Lakes in the park, and officials want to limit or stop their spread to smaller lakes that aren’t directly connected to the larger lakes, such as Shoepack and Locator.
Chris Holbeck, Voyageurs’ chief of resource management, told St. Louis County commissioners Tuesday that new regulations to thwart spiny water fleas could include banning anglers from carrying live bait into the smaller lakes, banning the movement of boats from infected lakes to the interior lakes, and prohibiting private planes and boats in uninfected lakes.
The Park Service is expected to ask for public input on the issue beginning later this week.
“The potential is kind of unknown,” Holbeck said after the meeting. “Every system reacts differently. The potential is anywhere from nothing to a disruption of the whole food chain.”
The tiny creatures — which feed on zooplankton — were first discovered in the U.S. in 1982 and were found in Lake Superior in 1987. Since then, they’ve spread to about a dozen bodies of water in the Northland, including Rainy, Namakan and Sand Point, three of the larger lakes within Voyageurs.
Because the water fleas have a hard, sharp spine, minnows that eat the water fleas end up with lacerated stomachs, he said. Walleye generally spit them out, Holbeck said.
Park Service officials say Voyageur’s 26 interior lakes apparently aren’t infested with the water fleas, and they want to keep it that way.
“It’s quite possible that nothing will happen, but we feel we have a duty to contain it,” Holbeck said. “Somebody brought them up here. We’re not sure if they’re in the interior lakes, but we don’t think so. We will monitor it this spring and summer.”
To some longtime critics of federal regulations in the park, any new restrictions won’t sit well. St. Louis County Commissioner Keith Nelson of Virginia said that while exotic species concern him, education should be the key rather than restricting access.
“Restricting access is just the first step to making them motorless,” Nelson said. “Then it will be canoe only. Isn’t education the key here, not restricting access?”
So far, efforts to stop the spread of water fleas haven’t been successful. They have spread from Lake Superior into other lakes, probably by hitching a ride on boats, fishing gear or in bait buckets. They’ve already been reported in Saganaga, Flour, Greenwood, McFarland, Pine, Fish, Island, Rainy, Namakan and Sand Point lakes; in Lake Superior; and in the St. Louis and Cloquet rivers.
State Rep. David Dill, DFL-Crane Lake, a longtime critic of the Park Service, said he wouldn’t be pleased with restrictions within Voyageurs.
“We [the state] have a long ways to go to figure out how to prevent and contain invasive species,” Dill said. “But an outright ban of these things doesn’t seem very reasonable to me. This is becoming the land of banning everything.”
The Park Service hopes to have a plan in place before the May 12 Minnesota fishing opener, Holbeck said.
LEE BLOOMQUIST can be reached weekdays at (800) 368-2506, (218) 744-2354 or by e-mail at leebloom@cpinternet.com.
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