Lakes and rivers meeting highlights key issues facing Northwoods waters

Citizen involvement is essential to protecting the water resources of the Northwoods and Wisconsin.

That’s the message John Richter gave to about 80 attendees at the annual Northwoods Six-County Lakes and Rivers Meeting on Friday morning, July 17, at James Williams Middle School in Rhinelander.

Richter, a board member of Wisconsin Lakes, the statewide lake association, emphasized the continuing concern about the harm to lake ecology and character posed by enhanced wakes from wakesurf boats. The recent failure of state legislation involving wakeboats means that local ordinances prohibiting artificially enhanced wakes remain essential to safeguarding the state’s waters.

The meeting, with the theme, “What’s Your Lake’s Report Card?” included a presentation on Oneida County’s new lakes classification given by JoAnne Lund, grants and special projects specialist with the county’s land and water conservation department.

Lake classification considers a lake’s sensitivity to outside stressors by assessing its physical features and overall health, including health of surrounding lands. The county’s system groups lakes with similar features into three classes to help enable conservation efforts to be more focused and have greater impact.

The classification accounted for four key outside stressors (risk factors) that can affect a lake’s overall health: Amount of public access, density of shoreline development, exposure to enhanced boat wakes, and presence of aquatic invasive species.

Also at the meeting, Ted Rulseh, Oneida County Lakes and Rivers president, introduced a lake steward program that recognizes lake property owners for adopting a set of basic but high-impact best practices on their shorelands. The program is now available for adoption by lake associations and lake districts in Oneida County and elsewhere. More information is available at oclra.org.

John Kubisiak, northern region team supervisor in fisheries management with the state DNR, reported on fisheries classification, methods of fish population samplings, and how to interpret fish research reports. He shared images of how fish are captured for study and evaluated for their age and other characteristics.

In the closing session, Oneida County Conservationist Michele Sadauskas spoke about the importance of dark night skies and the impacts of light pollution. She shared images of phenomena visible in dark skies, including meteor showers and aurora borealis She also spoke on measures home and business owners can take to shield, place and operate lighting fixtures to minimize light pollution.

The meeting, sponsored by the Vilas and Oneida County Lakes and Rivers Associations, attracted lake association leaders and members and other lake and stream advocates from those two counties as well as Forest, Iron, Langlade and Lincoln.