Dick Butterfield, a Jefferson volunteer for the Damariscotta Lake Watershed Association (DLWA) took a workshop to identify invasive aquatic plants.
This week that course and Butterfield’s keen eyes may save Damariscotta Lake from the most aggressive invasive aquatic plant in North America – hydrilla (hydrilla verticillata).
Maine Dept. Environmental Protection biologists and the Volunteer Lake Monitoring Program confirmed Butterfield’s Sept. 21 discovery in the lake’s west 0.3-acre cove.
Able to grow an inch a day and without predators, hydrilla overtakes native lake habitats, shading and out competing ecologically valuable plants. Dense infestations can alter water chemistry and oxygen levels.
A preliminary survey on Sept. 23 suggests the infestation is limited to within and just outside the mouth of the small cove.
Biologists from the DEP are screening off the cove’s mouth to prevent hydrilla fragments and thereby potential new infestations, from migrating into greater Damariscotta Lake. Butterfield and other DLWA volunteers, who are trained in plant identification and lake survey methods will begin monitoring nearby coves to determine the scope of hydrilla in the lake.
Plant identifications training is provided by Volunteer Lake Monitoring Program’s Center for Invasive Aquatic Plants under contract with the DEP.
Only one other water body in the state, Pickerel Pond in Limerick, is infested with hydrilla. In total, 31 out of Maine’s 5700 ponds and lakes contain an invasive aquatic plant species.
