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Lake Champlain is home to 51 non-native species. In this series, we will discuss who those species are, how they impact the lake and its economy, and how to manage them. This series is a partnership between Lake Champlain Sea Grant and Lake Champlain Basin Program, developed and written by Gabriella Marchesani, a science writer at LCSG and a boat launch steward at LCBP. In this column, she will reflect on encounters at the boat launch, interview experts to clear up misconceptions, and prepare basin residents for some incoming species.

Having learned the cost, labor, and time it takes to control an invasive species once it has entered Lake Champlain, I know we should prioritize prevention. Despite this, delivering the importance of this message to the public can be challenging.

I am inspired by the older generation who has developed an enriching relationship with Lake Champlain that is almost contagious. I am also inspired by the future generation, the children that come up to drown me in questions about the invasive “critters and plants” to look out for when they’re out on the lake. While data proves the importance of prevention measures, the passion individuals carry to protect the lake can play a pivotal role in how the public stewards it.

So, what does effective AIS prevention look like? Why is it necessary? Who plays a role? Luckily, I recently had the opportunity to interview NEIWPCC Environmental Analyst and Lake Champlain Basin Program (LCBP) Aquatic Invasive Species Management Coordinator, Meg Modley, who founded the aquatic invasives boat launch stewardship program in Lake Champlain. In this article, I will recap my interview with Meg Modley to learn the dos and don’ts of AIS prevention.

LCBP Stewards: From Mountains to Lakes

If you’ve ever launched a watercraft at a public boat launch on Lake Champlain, you’ve probably run into the stewards from the Lake Champlain Basin Program (LCBP) or Adirondack Watershed Institute in the blue vests asking you about “clean, drain, dry.” While LCBP’s now 20+ stewards run into regulars at the launch who know all about the invasives to look for, the program started with only four stewards. During my interview with Meg Modley, she tells the story of the growth of the steward program, modeled after the Alpine Tundra Mountain Steward Program which started in the Adirondacks and the Green Mountains. These stewards were stationed on top of the mountains to educate hikers on the importance of staying on the rock paths and preventing the stepping on plant species that will lead to their demise.

The integral idea of stewardship and raising awareness about ecologically sensitive and rich mountaintop ecosystems was reimagined for small lakes and ponds in the Adirondack region. The Adirondack Watershed Institute, Adirondack Park Invasive Plant Program, and Adirondack lake associations individually spearheaded having lake stewards to prevent the spread of Eurasian watermilfoil. As the lake steward concept gained traction in the Adirondacks, it grew from 5 lakes to 10 lakes, and then LCBP began to look at the lake steward model and think about how it could be adapted to a large lake like Lake Champlain.

Modley breaks down a key question when starting the program on Lake Champlain: how do you take a model from a mountain, to a small lake, to Lake Champlain? The team identified the busiest public boat launches, started targeting weekend days, and gathered data to identify where watercraft were coming from before launch and where they planned to go next. The data indicated both threats of introducing new aquatic hitchhikers to Lake Champlain and spreading AIS to uninvaded bodies of water after visiting Lake Champlain. The stewards monitor launches in Vermont, New York, and Quebec from Thursday to Monday, starting on Memorial Day weekend in May through Indigenous People’s Day in October.

Clean, Drain, and Dry

“We want people who come to visit Lake Champlain to know that every single time we either go into the water or come out of the water, we have an opportunity to move aquatic invasive hitchhikers, and this is mostly an unintentional process so there’s no pointing fingers or blaming,” shared Modley. She explained the importance of “clean, drain, dry” prevention measures for motorized and non-motorized watercrafts.

Clean: to really inspect all the gear so the boat, the trailer, the anchor, any lines that were in contact with the water and removing aquatic plants, in particular, is very effective just with the naked eye of removing those macrophytes, taking them off and then making sure that you put them away from the water and that they don't go back into the body of water. 

Drain: draining bilge water, draining motor water, and making sure any live wells or other compartments are completely drained, and that's because the early life stages of aquatic invasive animals are not visible to the naked eye.

Dry: drying can be effective in spread prevention of small bodied AIS and is determined by temperature and humidity.  Sometimes knowing when a boat is fully dry is difficult and some organisms can withstand periods of desiccation. Drying is most effective combined with the clean and drain spread prevention measures.

To address small bodied organisms like young zebra mussels that cannot be seen with the naked eye, decontamination stations have been included into the boat launch steward program. Decontamination stations have been added to the highest risk locations because preventing organisms from entering water bodies is much cheaper than managing them once they’re established. The burden of managing invasive species once established requires the consistent hunt for funding with limited resources.

While people have expectations of restoring lakes and ponds returning to their original state, Modley explains "we're constantly in the changing environment, so nothing is going to stay exactly as it was. We do want to slow and prevent the introduction of aquatic invasive species. Although this does not mean these water bodies will look how they did decades ago.”

Modley has also observed anglers often consider Eurasian watermilfoil good for bass fishing. However, this is a common misconception. If there wasn't Eurasian watermilfoil, there might be less dense beds of native vegetation that offer more habitat and more food options for the species that live in that lake ecosystem. It’s challenging to address misconceptions like this in a 30-second interaction at the boat launch, which is why the “boat launch steward program is all about finding the connection.”

Supporting AIS Legislation

After learning about the support LCBP gained and the network of lake associations preventing the spread of AIS, I asked Meg Modley about the role of collaborating with partners across state boundaries in AIS management and prevention.

Stewards fill out surveys after each interaction with boaters to determine when/where they last launched, which is then collected by LCBP. These data collections and documentations bolstered significant support for the AIS management program across local lake associations, community members, nonprofit organizations, state agencies, and eventually federal partners. between lakes and developed a comprehensive program to intercept pathways of invasive species. Later, the first invasive species transport regulations in New York and Vermont were adopted.

 has just received funding for another 10 years, through recently passed legislation, the Lake Champlain Basin Program Reauthorization Act of 2024. “These places unfortunately cannot take care of themselves, they require a commitment, they require resources, they require people who live near them to care and put the effort and resources into them to preserve and maintain them,” said Senator Peter Welch, in support of this legislation.

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