Eurasian water-milfoil has been an ever increasing problem throughout the state of Wisconsin over the last 30 years.  Management techniques implemented during this time to control Eurasian water-milfoil have included, but are not limited to, harvesting, hand pulling, herbicide application, and biological control.  More recently, it has been discovered that the Eurasian species has been hybridizing with native milfoils, making it more difficult to manage.  Join us to hear how three organizations collaborated to better understand the effectiveness of Eurasian water-milfoil management methods.  Through the experiences of these groups, participants will learn about one option for integrating multiple management techniques to evaluate successful control of the hybrid and Eurasian water-milfoil. 

Presenters: Mike Grisar, WE Energies and Cortney Marquette, Enviroscience

Organizations must be increasingly strategic in all aspects of work to accomplish their mission.  How can strategic organizational plans help?  In this interactive session we will discuss the benefits of strategic planning, and also obstacles to planning.  We will also provide an overview of how to develop a strategic plan.  This session is for staff, board members and volunteers of all levels.

Lake Tomah is a 220 acre impoundment on the South Fork of the Lemonweir River in Monroe County.  While a number of management projects have been undertaken over the years to help improve this popular recreational area, it still suffers from sediment and phosphorus loading, algae blooms, extremely high carp populations, and high turbidity.  Learn how the district used a survey to gather citizens’ input on restoration options.  Find out what steps this community is now taking to conduct a lake drawdown project, and why this is a viable restoration method for Lake Tomah.  The drawdown, scheduled to begin in fall 2008, is expected to: remove carp—through total fish eradication, restore the fishery—through restocking, restore native aquatic plants, improve water quality, and reduce erosion of islands and shorelines.

Moose Lake property owners teamed up with the Couderay Regional Land Trust and UW-Stevens Point’s Center for Land Use Education.  The group used the latest information and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to inventory shoreline characteristics.  The results and comparisons with previous inventories were surprising.  Superimposing ownership data from plat records provided information never previously calculated, such as miles of shoreline owned by public, private, and semi-private entities.   An effective lake management and citizen engagement tool was emerging!  Find out how these GIS-enabled findings precipitated informed discussions and actions by Moose Lake stakeholders, including private land owners, utilities, realtors, the Department of Natural Resources, the U.S. Forest Service, Couderay Regional Land Trust, and the Sawyer County Land Records Department.

It is often assumed that aquatic invasive species and deteriorations in water quality are perceived by the public as problems. However, we frequently lack good data indicating the extent to which citizens perceive these environmental stressors as representing threats to their economic well being or quality of life. In a modest step toward collecting such data, several colleagues in UW-Extension have teamed up to implement a survey of homeowners in two key lake areas of Bayfield County, Wisconsin. In this presentation we discuss some of the findings of the survey, and make links relevant to lake issues in Wisconsin.