Pretty Purple Flowers!!  

Our Lake Manager, Steve LaMere of Adirondack Ecologists will be training volunteers in June to harvest purple loosestrife, (Lythrum salicaria) an extrmely invasive plant that has just started appearing around the shores of Schroon Lake and Paradox.  The plants spread extremely rapidly, choking out native plants and creating a monoculture with diminished value for wildlife.  Although the flowers look lovely they have millions of seeds which spread easily and once they take root they are very hard to dislodge. 

Our volunteers Don and Ellie Searles spent the summer of 2007 mapping purple loosestrife in Schroon Lake and Paradox.  They removed many plants during the process of their work but we need everyone to join us now in our fight against this invasive plant. 

For more information on what you can do, please ask us to send you a copy of the brochure, "Purple Loosestrife, What You Should Know, What You Can Do."  This brochure shows how to identify the plant, and how to remove it and dispose of the plant material safely.

We plan to have volunteers trained to harvest purple loosestrife in June before the seeds have developed in order to curb the spread of this plant.  Join us for a day by the lake!

Curly Leaf Pondweed  

A relatively small-scale curly-leaf pondweed infestation was discovered in Schroon Lake in June of 2003 in the navigation channel of the marina.  To date, it is the only documented sighting of this species in the lake, and thus far it has been relatively easy to control it.

Zebra Mussels  

Another aggressive invader is zebra mussels.  As far as we know at this time there are no zebra mussels in Schroon Lake.  They can be imported as larvae in bilge water from boats which have been used in other lakes with zebra mussel infestations.  Unfortunately these are microscopic organisms which cannot be seen.  The best defense is not to pump bilge water acquired in other lakes into our lake. 

Beware of Look-Alikes!  

This photo demonstrates how many invasives can look similar to native plants.  EWM (Eurasian Watermilfoil) is shown on the left hand side, while our native Bladderwort plant is shown on the right.

This is one of the many reasons we ask that our volunteers who help us to rid the lake and its watershed area of invasive plants be trained specifically for that purpose!