Lewis Creek Association

Year three work season ends in Town Farm Bay at Lake Champlain. Working to restore the ecological health of our lake edge bays. Thanks to the 2011 work team who removed the 43rd ton of invasive plants. Three years and 5,213 hours later, we are ready for the lake edge towns to take charge.

Pickin’ Lily Pads: A Reflection on the Kimball/Thorp Brook Frogbit Removal Project

By Walker Brown

June 2010-July 2011

The sun has just become visible over the clouds on the eastern horizon as I unlock the big red gate and let it swing into place. I hop back on my bike and resume my ride down the bumpy, unkempt dirt road. Dozens of rabbits scatter in alarm at my intrusion on their morning activities. I place my bike in the barn and prepare myself for a day of work in Town Farm Bay. On the walk down, lugging a paddle, life jacket, and rake, the lofty dry grass seems to shimmer with golden light in the angled morning sun. The field is long overdue for a haying.

I reach the boat launch and marvel at how far the water has receded since the beginning of the season. The lines on the trees tell me that it has fallen around 5 feet, and continues drop each day. I drag my canoe down to the muddy edge and push off as two great blue herons squawk and take flight, troubled by my sudden movements. For a minute, I simply let my initial thrust propel the boat and stop to take in my surroundings. There is a mist hovering above the water, and I remember that this is usually an indication of the water being at a higher temperature than the cool morning air. I reach down and submerge my hand in the perfectly still water and find that this is indeed the case. As I dip the paddle into the water, small whirlpools spin on the still surface. The movement of my boat and the paddle is the only motion I can detect in the area.

I paddle out in silence, keeping my ears and eyes peeled for any interesting happenings in the wetland. The sounds of various choruses of Green Frogs and Bull Frogs, as well as my personal favorite the Gray Treefrog, resonate across the wetland. I manage to spot a few more herons, including the Black-Crowned Night Heron, as well as a group of unidentified small waterfowl that were flushed out and gone before I could take a closer look. It is too early for the reptiles; they will not be emerging from the water until the air is warmer and the sun has risen above the tallest trees. Before I begin the laborious task of raking out buckets of floating Frogbit, the weed we were hired to destroy, I take a second to appreciate what my past two summers have been, and how different they were from each other.

As a child, I grew up wandering through ponds and streams, always searching for interesting reptiles, amphibians, fish, and other organisms. I would often bring them home to one of my twenty or so fish tanks that were strewn about our small home greenhouse. After the first day of working in Town Farm Bay in June 2010, I could not believe my luck. Here I was, out in a beautiful wetland canoeing around and doing exactly what I had always done as a child, but had often not had the time to do as a busy college student. Though the days near the end of the season became very tedious, I would always be able to simply sit for a minute and look around, reminding myself of where I was and what I was doing. When I found out that the project was definitely on for a second season, I was overjoyed to know that I would be able to return to the place that I had spent so much time intimately acquainting myself with.

However, I had no way of knowing how different this season would be than the last. Whereas last season the water had reached abnormal lows by the end of the season, storms during this past spring brought water to the highest levels that have EVER been recorded! On the first day, the bay was completely open water, something we had never even imagined last year. There were a few small lumps of cattails poking up in one area, Zone B, and that was it. We were not only able to canoe farther up Kimball and Thorpe Brooks, but also out into the field near the launch site and through the forests along the edges of the wetland. I could not believe how easy it was to maneuver through the silver maple swamp at the mouth of Kimball Brook. It truly felt as though were in a different area, maybe the bayous of the southern US or the mangrove swamps of tropical coastlines. None of us had any idea what kind of an effect this would have on frogbit and other vegetation in the wetland.

Frogbit was sparse in the beginning. Without anything for the free-floating weed to become caught on, it could not establish itself in one spot and spread. Instead it seemed to float into the forest edges and trees, where there was not as much sun to help it grow. We focused our efforts around the one clump of cattails in Zone B, where there were the only significant populations of frogbit. We even had to create a new work area, Zone D (aka Z), near the mouth of Thorpe Brook. This area was not at all accessible last year, but was easy to pick in at that time. The small areas of vegetation were teeming with an unbelievable array of wildlife.

I think I saw more wildlife in the first week this year than I did all summer last year. Turtles and snakes were sunning themselves on every available piece of driftwood, redwing blackbirds squawked angrily at us from the reeds, and ospreys soared above us. We even saw a few bald eagles. I cannot account for all the sightings, but My theory is that for the smaller animals, like the turtles and snakes, there were fewer areas to hide. I think they were concentrated to only a few small clumps of cattails, and therefore we saw much more of them.

As the water slowly receded and old cattail islands began to emerge, we were able to find more places to pick from. I seemed to observe, however, that the cattails submerged until late in the summer never grew back; they simply stayed as dead, dry stalks. It seemed that they could not survive being submerged for that long. I also noticed a much smaller population of wild rice and flowering rush, which were very dominant in the previous year. Conversely, Arrowhead was flourishing in the areas that were formerly dominated by these plants. The duckweed populations also seemed to explode this year, filling in the slow moving areas near the mouths of the two brooks.

Canoeing up Kimball Brook late in the season, I noticed that the banks, which last year were covered in thick vegetation such as irises and aquatic forget-me-nots, now are completely bare mud with a few scraggly silver maple seedlings struggling to compete for the available light. The high water may have killed seeds, seedlings, and rhizomes of the usual riparian vegetation.

All in all, there was a lot less frogbit this year. Whether that its because of our picking, the high water, or both, it is difficult to say. It can be sure that whatever happens in this wetland in the next few years will be very interesting (to me and the crew anyway).

We locked the gate on Friday, and I looked at the barn for one last time. This project is something I will remember and talk about for the rest of my life. I have already used it in my resume and cover letter for a prairie restoration position I recently applied to in Washington. Along with some of my courses, this really got me interested in the restoration of altered ecosystems. I look forward to staying in contact with Sue, Marty and the rest of the crew as I move forward to the next phase of my life. I would like to see in the future if what we did truly made a difference in the bay, and whether it will last. Thanks to everyone I worked with, especially the volunteers who took their time to come and help out. I do not know if I will ever be able to find a job quite like this one.