Invasive Species Watercraft Inspection Program, Division of Ecological Services

25

November 28, 2006

Jeff Peltier

21853 Broadwater Drive

Pelican Rapids, MN 56572

Dear Jeff,

I wanted to give you a summary of the data that we collected during the 2006 season at Pelican Lake. I have divided the information into three sections: expectations, results, and discussion.

Expectations:

The Pelican Group of Lakes Improvement District requested, and it is stated in the income contract, that we have inspectors at both accesses on Pelican Lake between May 13^th and August 27^th of the 2006 season. That request encompassed a total of 363 possible inspection hours, the watercraft inspection program completed 326 of these hours during the times you had requested and completed another 36.5 hours that were funded by the DNR.

Results:

Inspections – During the 2006 season 1,132 inspections were completed at Pelican Lake. Of those inspections a total of 717 were performed on watercraft entering the water and 404 were performed on watercraft exiting the water.

Boats from zebra mussel infested waters - The surveys found that three boaters out of 1,132 inspections done during the summer of 2006 at Pelican Lake had come to Pelican Lake from a waterbody in Minnesota known to be infested with zebra mussels. These waterbodies include Lake Superior, the St. Louis River, the St. Croix River, Lake Zumbro and Lake Ossawinnamakee, and Lake Mille Lacs. Of those 3 boaters interviewed, 2 were about to enter Pelican Lake and had come from Lake Mille Lacs and 1, who had come from Lake Ossawinnamakee, was exiting.

Boats from other states - The surveys found that about 3% of the boaters who were inspected either entering or exiting Pelican Lake had come from another state. These boats likely represent another high-risk group. Below is a table of each state boaters came from, whether there are zebra mussels present in that state, and how many from each state were inspected either entering or exiting the water.

State	ZM Present in that State	Number per State
AK	X	1
CA		2
CO		1
FL		1
IA	X	2
IL	X	2
IN	X	1
KS		2
MN	X	531
MT		4
NC		1
ND		543
NE	X	2
SD	X	7
TX		5
WI	X	4

Plants or zebra mussels detected - None of the boats inspected were found to have zebra mussels on them, but 140 boats did have attached vegetation. Of the 140 boats, 23 of the boats with attached vegetation were entering Pelican Lake. Our inspection results suggest that about 3.2% of the boats coming to Pelican Lake have attached vegetation. Conversely, 117 boats exiting Pelican Lake (or about 29%) were found to have attached vegetation.

Below is a table of how many inspections were done at each of the accesses with the inspections sorted into entering and exiting.

Access Name	Number of Boaters/Inspections	Enter/Exit/Unknown	Hours	Insp per Hour
East	561	359/196/2	119	4.71
West	571	358/208/0	92.5	6.17

Decals - Below is the number of inspections broken down by whether they had a current year decal and would be a repeat, had a previous year’s decal and had talked to us in past years, or had never spoken to us before.

Year Inspections Incoming Outgoing Curr Yr Dec Prev. Yr decal no decal

2006 1,121 717 414 290 46 780

Boater origin and knowledge - We have data for 857 boaters who were asked if they are familiar with invasive species, 82 or 9.5% of them were not familiar with invasive species. When asked if they were familiar with Eurasian water milfoil 139 out of 853 or 16% said they were not familiar. We also asked boaters if they were familiar with zebra mussels and the problems they cause and 285 out of 848 or 33.6% of boaters said they were not familiar with zebra mussels. These numbers illustrate that many of the boaters who are using Pelican Lake do not know about the problems associated with invasive species and the specific problems that are caused by Eurasian water milfoil and zebra mussels.

Discussion:

The 2006 season was very successful. We managed to fulfill many of the hours that the Pelican Group of Lakes Improvement District had requested. One issue that we had anticipated was the high number of hours of drive time. There were a total of 142 hours of drive time at Pelican Lake during the times PGOLID had requested inspection time. This is because the program has a goal of spending 90% of its time at infested waterbodies and we did not have any staff available closer to Pelican Lake.

We have enjoyed working with you again this season and look forward to next season.

Sincerely,

Heidi Wolf

Watercraft Inspection Program Coordinator

Phone: 651-259-5152

Fax: 651-296-1811

E-mail: heidi.wolf@dnr.state.mn.us