Tag Archives: Ecosystem

Missisquoi Bay Watershed Plan

Plan for Lakes, Rivers and Wetlands of the Missisquoi Bay Watershed

The lakes, rivers and wetlands of Lake Champlain’s Missisquoi Bay watershed provide recreational opportunities, drinking water and support for wildlife habitat and plant communities.  Water resource protection and remediation is necessary to ensure the community’s continued enjoyment of these uses.

Plan for Lakes, Rivers and Wetlands of the Missisquoi Bay Watershed

Karen Bates, Watershed Management Division basin planner, and partners in the watershed have assessed water resources, conducted high-resolution water quality modeling, and combed through every previous assessment to document projects to protect high quality waters and remediate where needed.  The result is the draft Missisquoi Bay Watershed Tactical Basin Plan, which is now ready for public review and comments.  The plan also contains a chapter on how the basin-scale allocations of the new Lake Champlain Total Maximum Daily Load(TMDL) are broken down into small geographic areas to assist communities and stakeholders in identifying the best locations to implement phosphorus reduction projects.  The following table outlines the plan objectives and strategies.

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A series of three public meetings to learn more about the tactical basin plan and provide comments has been scheduled over the next month. The meetings are co-hosted by the Northwest Regional Planning Commission, the Northern Vermont Development Association, and the Lake Carmi Local Implementation Team. The schedule is:

  • November 9th, 6:00-8:00 pm, Georgia Fire Station, Georgia, VT (joint presentation with the Lamoille Plan)
  • November 14th, 6:00-8:00 pm, Jay Municipal Building, Jay, VT
  • November 17th, 5:00-7:00 pm, FELCO Community Room, Franklin Homestead, Franklin, VT

The draft tactical basin plans will be accessible via the Watershed Management Division’s basin planners and online.

The public comment period is November 1st through close of business (4:30 pm) on December 2nd.

For more information, contact Karen Bates by email or phone at (802) 490-6144.

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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

VT Legislators Looking to Ban Microbeads in Vermont

Legislators to Ban Microbeads in Vermont ?

Members of the Vermont House voted Tuesday to ban the production and sale in Vermont of products containing microbeads. Microbeads are the almost invisible plastic scrubbing granules found in many personal care products, such as soaps and cleansers.

Water quality advocates and environmentalists claim that the non-biodegradable plastic waste get washed down the drain and into the wastewater stream. Microbeads are so small that they can pass through most of the Vermont’s wastewater treatment plants. According to Robert Fischer, chief operator of the Montpelier wastewater treatment plant, the Montpelier facility can only filter out debris more than six millimeters in size. Scientists says the microbeads are often smaller than five millimeters.

Legislators Looking to Ban Microbeads in Vermont

The size of a microbead

“The vast majority have no ability to filter it off, and for the ones that do, it would still be problematic,” Fischer said. There are 59 wastewater treatment plants that discharge into Lake Champlain, and only five in the Burlington area use a cloth filtration to catch microbeads. After removal with other sludge the beads are either sent to a landfill or used as biosolid fertilizer, according to Fischer.

Last week the VT House’s Fish and Wildlife Committee took up bill, H.4,, which would prohibit the manufacture (effective Jan. 1, 2017) and sale (effective Jan. 1, 2018) of the products in Vermont. Last year Illinois enacted a similar ban on microbeads after the beads were found in the Great Lakes. The Illinois bill takes effect one year later. Yesterday the Vermont House voted to impose the ban; the bill still needs Senate approval before becoming law.

Microbeads in Our Waterways

There have been no studies that measure the quantities of microbeads in Vermont’s waterways, but some Lake Champlain scientists say the beads can be seen along the shoreline – along with other trash.

Legislators Looking to Ban Microbeads in Vermont

Legislators Looking to Ban Microbeads in Vermont

Lori Fisher, executive director of the Lake Champlain Committee, says that microbeads do pose harm to aquatic life. She said fish feed on the buoyant beads, mistaking them for fish eggs. “This can cause internal abrasions and blockages resulting in reduced food consumption, stunted growth and starvation. When plankton, mussels or fish fill up on plastic junk food they are likely to lose their appetite for healthier food.” Fisher and others say the microbeads also attract toxic chemicals which can then make their way up the food chain, through studies have not documented this as a risk to public health.

Rachael Miller, executive director of the Rozalia Project, a group of scientists who study marine trash, said pollutants attach themselves to the plastic beads like a sticker and can be carried through the food chain. “The presence of this stuff has the potential to affect the ecosystems, and we are part of that ecosystem,” Miller said.

Martin Wolf of Seventh Generation, a Burlington-based manufacturer of environmental household products, said the company uses ground coconut shell in some of its products. “Microbeads are nonessential. Substances exist that are mineral or biodegradable, perform the same function, and have no meaningful impact on the economics of the products in which they are used,” he said in testimony to the Committee. He said alternatives include hardened seed kernels, crushed cocoa beans, ground coconut shells, oatmeal, calcium carbonate and silica. All of these materials are organic compounds that are biodegradable.

Many manufacturers already use alternatives, such as ground nuts, oatmeal and pumice, and are not opposing the ban. However, they urge Vermont to pass regulations that align with those in Illinois, including postponing the proposed implementation date by one year.

In Vermont’s bill, manufacturing with microbeads would be banned beginning Jan. 1, 2017, and banned for sale the following year. The Personal Care Products Council suggested pushing back the Vermont regulations back by one year to Dec. 31, 2017, to match regulations in Illinois.

“We really look forward to having a commitment to phase out, but we can’t have 50 different sets of rules,” said Mike Thompson of the Personal Care Products Council, a trade group representing cosmetic and personal care member companies. “It’s not a position of any opposition … we are committed to removing microbeads from our products.” “It is something our members started, and the industry is committed to phasing out microbeads on a timely basis,” Thompson said.

 

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VT Agriculture Secretary Rules on Mandatory BMPs in Missisquoi Bay Basin

Vermont Secretary of Agriculture Issues Decision on Mandatory BMPs in Missisquoi Bay Basin

Vermont’s Secretary of Agriculture Chuck Ross issued a decision last week that denied a petition from the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) to impose mandatory best management practices on farms in the Missisquoi Bay Basin. The decision did, however, direct the Agency’s Agricultural Water Quality Program to accelerate its agricultural water quality compliance and enforcement activities in the Missisquoi Bay Basin.

VT Sec’y of Agriculture Issues Decision on Mandatory BMPs in Missisquoi Bay Basin

A ‘honey wagon’ or liquid manure truck on a dairy farm near Mississquoi Bay

Last May a petition filed by the CLF sought to impose mandatory best management practices (BMPs) for water quality on farms in the Missisquoi Bay Basin that are “critical source areas” as modelled by a 2011 Lake Champlain Basin Program study. In July a public hearing on the petition was held in St. Albans, VT – that provided extensive testimony and comment. Secretary Ross considered the study a guidepost for on-going water quality work, but ruled that the data did not provide an adequate regulatory rationale to impose mandatory BMPs in Missisquoi Bay Basin.

Ross concluded that the actions sought by the CLF would not be consistent with the EPA’s continuing process for water quality improvement under the federal Clean Water Act. That process establishes a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) for Lake Champlain. Additionally, his decision notes that there are insufficient resources available at this time, to help the basin’s farmers to achieve compliance with mandatory BMPs, as required by state law. The full text of the decision can be accessed at: http://agriculture.vermont.gov/clf_petition

“The written decision speaks for itself. CLF’s initiative and the hearing process, in which stakeholders on all sides engaged in thoughtful and civil discourse, demonstrate why Vermont is a special place where we work together to address mutual concerns. CLF has pledged, on the record, to assist stakeholders in seeking additional resources devoted to agricultural water quality improvement.” ~ Vermont Secretary of Agriculture, Chuck Ross

Additional information, including the original hearing notice and audio files from the hearing, can be found at http://agriculture.vermont.gov/clf_petition

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