Clean Boats, Clean Waters

In 2003, a group of young students from northern Wisconsin researched the impact tourism had on their town, Minocqua, and the devastating impacts aquatic invasive species (AIS) might have on the surrounding lakes. As young student activists, they proposed an action plan to prevent the spread of an aquatic invasive plant, Eurasian watermilfoil. The Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation, recognizing innovative ideas from young people, awarded this group $25,000 to develop and market an educational tool kit for boaters. The Milfoil Masters project produced and delivered 150 tool kits to twenty-five counties across Wisconsin. This successful project created an awareness of not only AIS, but also the prevention steps each boater needs to take when they leave a waterbody.

The Clean Boats, Clean Waters (CBCW) program grew out of the successful Milfoil Masters project. New resource tool kits, t-shirts and volunteer handbooks were designed to guide communities in developing a volunteer watercraft inspection team. The Wisconsin Lakes Partnership assisted in this effort with a series of statewide workshops to deliver the CBCW materials. These workshops were strategically placed in lake intensive areas of the state where invading aquatic species were most likely to take a foothold.

Since 2004 when the CBCW program was initiated, hundreds of workshops have been held and thousands of folks in over fifty counties have been trained as watercraft inspectors. Lake residents, county board members, tribal community members, representatives from county park and forest programs, boat marina operators and realtors have attended the workshops to learn how AIS can cause issues in Wisconsin waters. They also received instructions on how to organize a watercraft inspection program, how to approach boaters, perform boat/trailer checks, record pertinent data and report suspect specimens.

​With the guidance of a CBCW handbook and a resource kit full of aquatic invasive species information, trained inspectors are the frontline defense against AIS. On weekends and busy holidays, teams of watercraft inspectors across the state educate boaters on how and where AIS are most likely to hitch a ride and how to perform a watercraft inspection. During watercraft inspections, inspectors engage boaters in conversation about the AIS prevention steps and keep a record of how many people they talk with. They report this information to a statewide database that tabulates both paid and volunteer watercraft inspector data.