Watershed Stewardship Program: Summary of Programs and Research, 2008

Adirondack Watershed Institute

Eric Holmlund, James Parmeter, Brittany Ravenscraft, Naomi Thompson, Eric Munley, Jessie Gardner, Korinna Marino, & Celia Evans

Part of Paul Smith’s College’s Adirondack Watershed Institute, the Watershed Stewardship Program (WSP) has served the Adirondack region in its effort to prevent the spread of invasive species to lakes in the Saranac Lake-Lake Placid region since 2000. For several years the program has served as a model and critical collaborator with conservation and advocacy groups across the region, including the Adirondack Park Invasive Plant Program, the Lake George Watershed Conference, and the Lake Champlain Basin Program.

The Watershed Stewardship Program is a cooperative, community-based effort to conserve natural resources, including water quality, wildlife and soil, through targeted educational efforts at specific locations near Paul Smith's College in New York State’s Adirondack Park. The program is a cooperative effort by members of the Paul Smith's College faculty, New York State land management agencies, including the Department of Environmental Conservation, non-governmental environmental organizations including the Nature Conservancy, the Adirondack Park Invasive Plant Program, Lake Champlain Basin Program and the Adirondack Cooperative Loon Program, and shore owner organizations from the St. Regis Lakes, Rainbow Lake, Lake Placid, Osgood Pond, Long Lake and Raquette Lake.

The WSP’s wide ranging programs include point-specific environmental interpretation, watercraft inspection, educational outreach, field-based invasive species monitoring and various data- collecting projects aimed at better understanding human pressures on waterways and local trails and the mitigation of associated environmental impacts. The program hires college students with expertise in the natural resources to act as educators, researchers and field technicians. This report is an annual effort to consolidate and report on all aspects of program activities for the summer of 2008.

Summer 2008 Highlights
The Watershed Stewardship Program provided educational services and invasive species inspections at northern Adirondack boat launches for the ninth consecutive year. Along with returning stewardship at the St. Regis Lake, Lake Placid and Rainbow Lake boat launches, this year saw expansion of boat launch inspection/education to Second Pond (reprising the effort from 2005), Osgood Pond (along with volunteers), Long Lake and Raquette Lake. This year featured the continuation of efforts to monitor and control the exotic invasive plant purple loosestrife, monitor loon pairs on the St. Regis Lakes, assess invasive plant presence on Lake Placid, provide public outreach programming around Raquette Lake and create aquatic macrophyte maps of Long Lake. Stewards also conducted a wetland transplant project, a wetland composition and function study, a study of pitcher plant morphology and a literature review of milfoil growth on Adirondack lakes. The WSP’s Volunteer Lake Steward Program was at work on Rainbow Lake and Osgood Pond, with volunteers inspecting boats and educating the public.

The primary thrust of this year’s program was once again to educate people launching watercraft about the threat of introduced invasive species, primarily Eurasian watermilfoil (Myriophyllum spicatum) and how to minimize exposure of lakes to the threat. Stewards also gathered detailed information about the character of boat launch use, including such information as total boats launched, type of watercraft, and demographic information. Watershed Stewards also asked boaters if they routinely take preventative measures, such as removing vegetation, washing boat and trailer, immediately emptying bilges, etc., to avoid the risk of spreading invasive species. Stewards were ordinarily stationed at the boat launches, but had other duties, such as paddling kayaks to observe loons, monitoring and controlling purple loosestrife on waterways, and conducting public outreach in addition to maintaining data bases and meeting weekly to share information.