Bethel to consider bugs to untangle White Lake

A weevil is a better bet than sterile carp and chemicals

By FRITZ MAYER

WHITE LAKE, NY — There’s a menace that’s a nuisance to swimmers, boaters and anglers alike. But the good news is a natural antidote is available.

Over the past decade, the shallow parts of White Lake have become increasingly choked with Eurasian Milfoil, an invasive aquatic plant species, which, as far as the experts can tell, was probably introduced into waters in North America in the 1940s.

It has been present in White Lake at least six years. And this year, Bethel Supervisor Harold Russell is addressing the problem before it gets worse. He updated the board and residents on his research so far at the February 23 board meeting.

The first solution is not popular with fishing enthusiasts.

“There are sterile carp,” he said. Those are fish that eat the plant, and because the carp are sterile, don’t reproduce. The problem is, that along with the milfoil, the carp also eat small fish, “perhaps small lake trout,” Russell said.

A second solution, of poisoning the plants, has obvious problems.

“I wouldn’t want to put chemicals in a lake where children are going to swim” he said.

A third alternative is a bug commonly called a Milfoil Weevil.

According to Emily Cunningham at the Center for Aquatic and Invasive Plants at the University of Florida, the bug is the preferred control method because it doesn’t disturb other plant or animal life. “This weevil is a native and feeds exclusively on milfoil.”

But how is it that a native bug could feed exclusively on a plant from another continent? Answer: there is a native milfoil called Northern Milfoil, which, according to Cortney Marquette, a project manager with EnviroScience, is not as invasive as the Eurasian variety. Weevils have lived off Northern Milfoil for a long time. When the weevils were introduced to Eurasian Milfoil, the bugs greatly preferred the exotic overseas variety as a source of food and reproductive habitat.

Marquette said her company has tanks of Eurasian Milfoil at its plant in Ohio and raises weevils on the plants and sells the bugs in lots of 1,000. The cost is $1,200 or about $1.20 per bug. The cost is so high, Marquette said, because “it’s so time consuming to raise these little guys and get them going.”

Asked if there is a bugs-per-acre formula to treating lakes, Marquette said “no.”

“We talk with a lot of lake associations, and we try to work within their budgets. We’ve put 5,000 weevils into a 10-acre lake, and we’ve also put 5,000 weevils in a 100-acre lake.”

But will some weevil predator come along and make a lunch of the investment?

“There is some speculation that juvenile bluegill eat the larvae,” said Marquette, “but we haven’t had any problems in the lakes that we stock. There’s really no known predator.”

And the weevils are not prone to wandering off.

“Even if there’s a huge storm, these little bugs will stick to those plants. They hold onto those plants for dear life.” Marquette said. Which is one reason that when EnviroScience stocks a lake with weevils, “we take our milfoil that has all the different life stages on it, and we’ll tie in onto the plants in the lake.”

To treat White Lake, Russell first considered applying for a grant from New York State. But the state likes to know the steps taken to try to correct the problem. In the case of the milfoil, no steps have been taken over the years except for a few conversations at town meetings. So the prospect of getting a grant is not good.

The property owners around the lake have had the most complaints about the milfoil so far, so Russell’s plan is to hold a couple of fundraisers targeted at the folks near the lake to raise money to pay for the weevils.