Drag & Spruce Lakes

FOCA April Elert

• for the latest from FOCA – click here

Environment Haliburton 

Haliburton Highlands Land Trust

• for upcoming events – click here

Loons – Don’t Take Their Gift for Granted

A title in the most recent issue of Cottage Life magazine is “Death of an icon?” This article discusses the urgency to protect the amazing Common Loons that grace our lakes.  Can you even imagine the absence of the loons, loon families and loon calls on our waterways.  Please find the time to read the updated information in the report. As members of the Canadian Lakes Loon Survey we are contributing to the research.

There was also a recent documentary on the Cottage Life television channel “Loons: A Cry From The Mist” which reflects the wonder of their existence and the amazing lives of our loons but points out that their numbers are declining due to a variety of reasons from Mercury poisoning, human interactions, climate change to acid rain. To view the video – click here.

We must do all we can to safeguard the loons on our lakes. Some steps mentioned in the article are:

• Naturalize your shoreline
• Don’t attract raccoons to your yard, keep it litter free
• When out on the water stay away from the shore and possible nesting area. Give them space when you see them, perhaps about 100 m.
• Use a spotter in your boat to watch for loon families, chicks and dangers in the water.
• Use non toxic or non lead tackle if you fish.

To end on a more optimistic note we did have 3 chicks on Drag/Spruce  Lakes last summer that survived to maturity due to the 24 hour care of their parents and our respect for them.  We still had 6 to 7 resident adults but one pair seems to be beyond chick bearing age. Its so good to see them return each year and we’ll be looking and listening for them soon.

Thank you to the neighbours who contacted me with information on “our” loons especially when you first saw the chicks appear.  Please continue to do so!

Barb Bohlin   babohlin@gmail.com

EWM Working Group Gets Ready for EWM Control this Summer

As you can see by the thermometer atop the website, our 2023 fundraising is doing well. The Working Group has met and agreed on a number of things as we gear up for monitoring and controlling EWM this summer. Monitoring will begin in June with visits to all 19 sites on our map as of fall 2022. We anticipate at least 3 days of diver assistance will be needed, and that number could grow to 5 depending on our June monitoring. We've booked our dive contractor for the week of July 17, knowing that providing service to their larger clients could cause the date to slip further into the summer. We appreciate all reports of possible EWM growth, every volunteer and every EWM Fund donor. Finally, one of our Working Group members wrote the following, which we offer to all Drag Lake boaters as cautionary advice.

Avoiding EWM near Pine Tree Point

To mangle and mash a couple of lines from Bob Dylan: “Come gather ‘round people whatever your boats…and accept that the waters around us have growths… and our routes they need ‘a changin’…”

The “growth” is a new outbreak of Eurasian Watermilfoil (EWM), just north of the two hazard buoys located between what the Community of Drag Lake map designates as Sandy Point Beach and Pine Tree Point. Putting surface markers around the weed bed is a problem for various reasons, both legal and aesthetic. The easiest way to avoid it is to keep the outer hazard buoy on your RIGHT when heading NORTH, and on the LEFT when going SOUTH. The buoys mark the ends of a shoal. Going between them runs the risk of both prop damage and cutting through the weed bed.

As the water warms, the weed grows to within inches of surface level. A frond can be broken off by something as seemingly innocuous as a canoe, kayak or SUP paddle. Every frond is the lake equivalent of a cancer cell. They travel unnoticed until they find a place to take root — and then unrelentingly metastasise. Milfoil can clog a prop or jet ski as happily as it chokes the life out of a lake. Going between the buoys may be a quicker route, but who comes to Drag Lake to be in a hurry? And for those who are, bear in mind that if milfoil isn’t kept in check, as Dylan summed it up: “…the first one now will later be last.”