Invasive Species Management

Eurasian watermilfoil

The Lake George Park Commission coordinates an annual Eurasian watermilfoil management program, in concert with its nonprofit partners the Lake George Association and the Fund for Lake George.  Milfoil was first discovered in Lake George in 1986, and it has been managed to varying degrees over the past 30 years.  More than five million dollars has been spent over this time to control the aggressive growth of this invasive plant.

Within the past five years, milfoil control has been taken up much more aggressively by the project partners, in an effort to eliminate all dense milfoil beds in Lake George for the first time since its discovery in the 1980’s.  Thanks to recent additional funding from the NYS Department of State through Warren County, this goal seems closer than ever.  With all partners working together, we believe that the days of dense milfoil beds in Lake George will be a thing of the past.  Please take a look at the annual Eurasian watermilfoil reports for more information.

Please report any new milfoil sites to the Lake George Park Commission, at 518-668-9347.

Asian clams

Asian clams were first discovered in Lake George in 2010 at Lake Avenue Beach in the Village of Lake George. The Lake George Asian Clam Task Force was created in 2010 to address this emerging threat, consisting of agencies, nonprofits, and municipal leadership around the Lake George watershed.

For several years, the Task Force worked together in a concerted effort to eradicate localized populations of this invasive species by installing plastic matting and sandbags over dozens of acres of infested area to smother the clams. This technique was developed in Lake Tahoe and showed great promise on Lake George. These efforts resulted in very high mortality rates of the clams under the mats (96-100%), but over time those areas’ populations rebounded. Over the course of the Task Force’s seven years of focused work, almost $2 million dollars was spent on eradication efforts and scientific research. The matting efforts were abandoned in 2016 due to high cost and the observed low success in population eradication.

The purpose of the ongoing lake-wide survey conducted by the Commission is to observe how the clam populations are spreading throughout the lake and to quantify general population densities of new and known locations. In low densities, these invasive clams seem to have no negative impact on Lake George. In much higher densities (thousands of clams per square meter), there are long-term concerns about potential water quality and beach area impacts from excessive accumulation of dead clam shells.

For more information on invasive species in Lake George, please visit:

https://www.lakegeorgeassociation.org/educate/science/lake-george-invasive-species/

To learn more about the potential use of ProcellaCOR to manage Eurasian watermilfoil on Lake George, visit the ProcellaCOR Pilot Treatment page.

This page is the home of the scientific literature the Commission is using to inform decisions, NYS Dept. of Environmental Conservation permit materials, NYS Adirondack Park Agency permit materials, Public information meeting recordings, and answers to frequently asked questions.

Click here to view previous reports