Category Archives: Ecology

Ecology of Lake Champlain and how to protect our lake.

Clean Water Funding Opportunities

Clean Water Funding Opportunities

The Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation’s (DEC) Clean Water Initiative Program recently released three Requests for Proposals (RFP) for clean water funding, including Ecosystem Restoration Grants. Details are outlined below and posted on the DEC’s Clean Water Initiative Grants webpage.

 

Ecosystem Restoration Grants support the design and construction of water pollution abatement and control projects that target nonpoint sources of pollution. See the DEC Watershed Projects Database for possible projects. All other projects included in applications must be added to the database before the application deadline. Proposed projects must be discussed with your regional Basin Planner.

  • Release date: May 23rd
  • Application due date: July 6th

A detailed application manual is available online and provides step-by-step instructions to apply for funding.

Ecosystem Restoration Grant applicants are also encouraged to attend or view the webinars being offered:

  • Thursday, May 25th, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm: Presentation on key changes to the RFP, including application types, project categories, and reporting processes, as well as a question and answer session. The presentation and webinar recording (YouTube) are now available online.
  • Tuesday, June 13th, 11:00 am – 12:30 pm: Question and answer session for grant applicants. Partners can attend in-person in Montpelier (limited seating is available) or online via Skype for Business. For more information and to RSVP if attending in-person, please contact Marli Rupe at (802) 490-6171.

Clean Water Funding Opportunities. Rumney School After

An Ecosystem Restoration Grant funded project at Rumney School in Middlesex, completed by the Winooski Natural Resources Conservation District (WNRCD), reduces stormwater runoff from the school grounds, which had caused erosion and sediment pollution in nearby Martin Brook. The project also serves as an outdoor classroom for students. (Photo Credit: WNRCD)

Clean Water Funding Opportunities. Rumney School Before

Before the project was installed.

 

Clean Water Block Grants support statewide partner(s) to administer completion of “construction-ready” clean water improvement projects identified on the DEC Watershed Projects Database “Go List.” RFP Questions and Answers are now posted online.

  • Release date: May 23rd
  • Application due date: June 5th

 

River Corridor Conservation Easement Grants support implementation of priority river corridor easements to reduce flood hazards, and improve water quality and wildlife habitat.

  • Release date: May 11th
  • Application due date: June 21st

For more information on any of these grant opportunities, please contact Marli Rupe at (802) 490-6171.

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Salinity Increasing in Vermont’s Lakes: Prevention is Key to Protection

Salinity Increasing in Vermont’s Lakes

 

Salinity Increasing in Vermont’s Lakes

The charts above show chloride concentrations (mg/L) over time at selected Lake Champlain stations. (Data source: Lake Champlain Long-Term Water Quality and Biological Monitoring Project)
Click image to Enlarge

Prevention is Key to Protection

A new study on increasing salinity levels in freshwater lakes around North America has been in the news recently. The study used data from 371 lakes, including Lake Champlain and several others Vermont lakes. The study found that chloride, the major contributor to salinity in freshwater, has been increasing in many lakes around North America during the last several decades. If the trend continues, chloride levels could become high enough to harm some lake organisms. Much of this chloride is getting into surface waters through winter road de-icing. The study notes that impervious surfaces, such as parking lots, roofs, roads, and other hard surfaces are a strong predictor of chloride trends in the Northeast.

 

Lake Champlain Impacted

Lake Champlain was highlighted as one of the lakes showing an increasing chloride trend. The Lake Champlain Long-Term Water Quality and Biological Monitoring Project has been

Lake monitoring

tracking chloride since 1990 and has documented increased chloride in all areas of the lake. Because of these findings and other data from around the Northeast, the Watershed Management Division added chloride criteria to the Vermont Water Quality Standards in 2014, representing the maximum level allowable without harm to aquatic life. The Watershed Management Division and other partners and stakeholders identify watersheds around Vermont with elevated chloride levels so that outreach and chloride reduction efforts can start. While the increasing trend in chloride in Lake Champlain is noteworthy, levels are very low relative to the Vermont Water Quality Standards limits.

 

Prevention

Winter de-icing practices around Northeast use road salt (sodium chloride) and some calcium chloride to keep roads safe. Salinity Increasing in Vermont’s Lakes: Prevention is Key to ProtectionThe Vermont Agency of Transportation and many local municipalities have implemented smart de-icing practices that include applying the amount of sodium chloride needed to keep roads open for travel while reducing the impact on water. Homeowners, business owners, and private maintenance companies can also protect our waters by carefully applying de-icing salts and other products throughout the winter.

To learn more about the harmful impacts of salt on aquatic organisms, read the Watershed Management Division’s summary of chloride impacts. Homeowners and business owners can watch this video to learn about the best tools to remove snow and ice.

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Judge’s Decision on cormorant control has Biologists feeling helpless

Judge’s Decision on Cormorants Leaves Biologists Feeling Helpless

Judge's Decision on cormorant control has Biologists feeling helpless

Biologists have been working to reduce the populations of the birds in the nesting grounds on the islands in the lake. But a federal judge’s decision suspended efforts to control the bird on Lake Champlain and in 24 eastern states.

Biologists are worried that a federal judge’s decidion to block programs that control double-crested cormorants in 24 states could set back their efforts on the birds, blamed for despoiling islands in Lake Champlain where they nest.

In other areas of the country, cormorants — sea birds with long necks and hooked bills — are blamed for eating thousands of sport fish favored by anglers and preying on fish in farms.

Vermont officials, who this time of year are usually overseeing control programs that include oiling eggs to prevent them from hatching, and shooting the birds or scaring them away, worry that even one year without the control program could see the number of cormorants on the lake increase by 21 percent.

“It will not take very long for that number to double without some active management,” said Mark Scott, wildlife director for the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife, which manages about 20 islands and some sections of shoreline that have been known to host cormorants.

Judge's Decision on cormorant control has Biologists feeling helpless

 

The March decision by a judge in Washington determined that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service didn’t do its homework before issuing a pair of orders that let people kill thousands of cormorants each year to preserve vegetation in some areas and protect sport fish in 24 states and farmed fish in 13 of those states.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Laury Parramore said the agency is studying its next step.

Cormorants, which winter in the South and spend summers on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain, have nested on Champlain for at least a century. They were brought to near-extinction by the pesticide DDT, and no one is sure why the numbers have increased dramatically over the last quarter-century.

Dave Capan, a retired University of Vermont biologist who is managing a cormorant program on the Four Brothers Islands, estimates there are about 1,600 breeding pairs of cormorants on the lake, down from a peak of about 4,000 about 15 years ago. The islands lie in the middle of the narrow, 120-mile long lake, are owned by the Nature Conservancy and are off limits to the public.

“They nest in very large numbers, and they kill trees on islands in the lake,” Capan said. “There are at least five or six islands in this lake that have lost most of their trees and vegetation.”

Capan disagrees with Scott’s assertion that the birds would increase by 21 percent in one year without control. He said he feels that as long as the control programs resume by next spring, there shouldn’t be any long-term setback to the control efforts.

 

Biologists Working to Save Lake Champlain's Young Island from cormorants

Cormorants have a long history of being hated by humans, said Ken Stromberg, a retired U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist from Denmark, Wisconsin, who was among those who filed the lawsuit against the service that led to the March decision blocking the control programs.

“A cormorant is a scapegoat for everything that consumers are unhappy about,” said Stromberg, who isn’t opposed to cormorant control programs but feels the Fish and Wildlife Service must do the required studies before issuing orders.

 

Biologists Working to Save Lake Champlain’s Young Island

Biologists Working to Save Lake Champlain’s Young Island

Biologists Working to Save Lake Champlain's Young Island from cormorants

Biologists from Vermont’s Department of Fish & Wildlife have been working to rescue a state-owned island from the brink of destruction by birds.

“It’s quiet compared to the way it used to be here,” said biologist John Gobeille as he stepped from a boat onto Young Island in Lake Champlain. “You used to need earplugs.”

Now grassy and green, Young Island was barren and rocky because its surfaces had been denuded. The island was infested with shrieking ring-billed gulls and cormorants, whose toxic droppings killed vegetation.

Biologists Working to Save Lake Champlain's Young Island from cormorants

“It’s coming back,” Gobeille said, observing plant life on the island.

By applying cooking oil to the gulls’ eggs so they can’t hatch, over the past 15 years the population of ring-billed gulls is less than a tenth of the 15,000 that once dominated the island. They would bully other birds, keeping species away, Gobeille explained.

“The species diversity here had declined to only, like, two [bird] species,” Gobeille said.

For cormorants, the oil work, combined with shooting the birds in a prescribed process more than ten years ago, dramatically minimized numbers on Young Island, accorfing to fish and wildlife officials. Visitors to the lake will see cormorants at many other locations on and around the water.

Now, with the gull numbers down on Young Island, Mark Scott, the wildlife director of the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, said birds including the black duck and the common tern have been able to nest on the island again. The common tern, despite its name, is listed as a state-endangered species in Vermont.

Scott and Gobeille noted the department has planted trees and ground-covering plants to replace what the invaders killed. Not only would the birds’ acidic waste prevent plants from growing, but the birds would also defoliate trees and shrubs to build nests, Gobeille explained, turning the island into something resembling the surface of the moon.

Despite the turnaround in Young Island’s appearance, there is a lot more habitat restoration work that needs to be done on Lake Champlain. The department said it is currently watching five other state-owned islands, one private island through financial backing of the landowner, and another private island where the state deters birds that may interfere with nesting of the common tern.

Biologists Working to Save Lake Champlain's Young Island from cormorants

Thousands of cormorants are still damaging other land, boaters and fishermen have reported in recent years. Many sportsmen also believe the cormorants are robbing the lake of fish by gobbling up perch and smelt.

Fishermen have long complained about the cormorants, insisting that more needs to be done to control cormorants.

“The challenge comes down to money; you know, economics,” Scott told necn. “People say, ‘Well, why don’t you just let people go out and hunt [cormorants] on their own? Well, they’re not classified as a game species under federal law.”

Even with more challenges ahead, the transformation of Young Island has left the department optimistic that habitat management can work.

Scott said the department does its gull and cormorant work with just over $40,000 in state funding, but to be more effective, the team would need $100,000 in additional monies from federal grants, state appropriations, non-profit support, or other sources.

Other Articles About Lake Champlain Islands:   List of Lake Champlain's Islands

Sea Grant: 50 Years of Work for Cleaner Water

Sea Grant: 50 Years – Putting Science to Work for America’s Coastal Communities

In the Lake Champlain Basin, we are blessed with an abundance of water resources and reap the many benefits: the beauty of a colorful sunset across Lake Champlain, a perfect day of boating or fishing, and the peaceful sound of a bubbling brook making its way to the lake. There certainly are many rewards.

We also face major challenges related to our water resources: from extreme flooding events, to phosphorus pollution, harmful algal blooms, and the spread of aquatic invasive species in the lake. These challenges affect local community members’ safety and welfare, limit access to services and hinder local economies.

For 50 years, Sea Grant programs across the nation, including Lake Champlain Sea Grant, have stepped up to address challenges like these in a variety of ways, supporting university research, and carrying out education and outreach efforts in local communities to protect and enhance coastal resources.

The National Sea Grant College Program begins a celebration of its 50th anniversary on March 8 with a reception in Washington DC. While acknowledging this national milestone, our local Lake Champlain Sea Grant program will be celebrating 17 years of research and outreach programming.

Founded in 1999 as a project of New York Sea Grant and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), creation of an independent Lake Champlain Sea Grant (LCSG) program in 2002 received strong support from Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy during deliberations about the National Sea Grant College Program Reauthorization Act. There, he advocated for an amendment that would include Lake Champlain in the National Sea Grant Program. Today, LCSG is a collaborative effort between the University of Vermont and SUNY Plattsburgh. The program has evolved over the years, earning promotion through NOAA’s four-tiered system in recognition of its successes along the way.

Since its inception, Lake Champlain Sea Grant has been dedicated to improving the understanding and management of Lake Champlain, Lake George and their watersheds for long-term environmental health and sustainable economic development.

Current Lake Champlain Sea Grant Efforts

Examples of current Lake Champlain Sea Grant efforts include:

  • Facilitating Watershed Alliance, a hands-on citizen science program that engages over 900 students annually in on-lake and in-stream assessments to increase their awareness and knowledge of watershed issues in Vermont; 
  • Developing and managing the Green Infrastructure Collaborative (GIC) in partnership with the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation. The GIC promotes low impact development and green stormwater infrastructure practices such as rain gardens, pervious pavement, and green roofs as the preferred methodologies to manage stormwater runoff from developed lands in Vermont;
  • Creating a series of webinars and accompanying fact sheets in partnership with the Great Lakes Sea Grant Network to better inform communities about the potential risks and costs of crude oil transport over, along, and under Lake Champlain and the Great Lakes;
  • Educating recreational boaters on Lake Champlain about clean boating practices to minimize the spread of aquatic invasive species and to help ensure clean water for swimming, boating, and fishing into the future; 
  • Supporting research that examines the type and distribution of microplastics in Lake Champlain, and that assesses climate change impacts on the lake.

The idea for the National Sea Grant College Program originated in 1963 from Athelstan Spilhaus, then Dean of the University Minnesota’s Institute of Technology. In a presentation to the American Fisheries Society, he proposed modeling a national university effort after the Land Grant University model. That is, that knowledge obtained through research by faculty, staff and students is shared off-campus in, and with communities, reaching those who need and can put the scientifically validated tools and ideas into action. Dean Spilhaus proposed applying the model to conduct research and outreach about the nation’s oceans and Great Lakes.

Lobbying by the tenacious and well-connected Spilhaus, and support from Sen. Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island, gained the idea traction. In 1966, Congress enacted the Sea Grant College program. Its charge was to, “Provide for the understanding and wise use of ocean, coastal and Great Lakes resources and the environment.”

That remains the charge for the 33 Sea Grant programs in existence today – including our local Lake Champlain Sea Grant. These programs conduct and support outreach and research focused on fisheries, resiliency, habitat protection and restoration, environmental education and workforce training in every state that has a marine or extensive freshwater coastline, along with American Samoa, Puerto Rico and Guam.

 

Since 1995 alone, more than 10,000 Sea Grant projects shared university knowledge and resources in local coastal communities to help solve problems. These programs, acting in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and a multitude of local partners, have leveraged more than $2.2 billion dollars along the way.

The 50th anniversary kick-off reception will be live streamed from Washington DC. To learn more about the event visit: http://www.sga.seagrant.org/.

Lake Champlain Sea Grant, 81 Carrigan Drive, Burlington, VT 05405

Email: seagrant@uvm.edu , Phone: (802) 656-8504, Fax: (802) 656-8683