BLIA Spring Announcements

Now that we have completed Ice Out twice this year it is time to get down to the business of the lake. As we fully enter the Milfoil Era on Beaver Lake, we have a couple of extremely important volunteer opportunities to offer those concerned about the future of Beaver Lake. We run two programs that are essential to the lake that require volunteers to be successful.

The Weed Watcher Program is a volunteer association dedicated to monitoring the lakes and ponds for the presence of exotic weeds. All that weed watching involves is a small amount of time during the summer months. Volunteers survey their water body once a month from May through August. To survey, volunteers slowly boat around the perimeter of that water body. Using the materials provides in the Weed Watchers Kit, volunteers will then look for any species that are of suspicion and send them to DES. After a trip or two around the water body, volunteers will have a good knowledge of its plant community and will immediately notice even the most subtle changes. We have an extremely active Weed Watcher program managed by Jeff Crothers. Over the past two years almost all Milfoil on Beaver Lake has been found by our Weed Watchers. We use GPS technology to mark the locations so that divers from the state can come and pull the Milfoil. If you are interested in becoming a Weed Watcher please contact us at blia@beaver-lake.org

Another program we run is the NH Lakes Lake Host Program.  The Lake Host™ Program is a courtesy boat inspection program administered by NH LAKES in cooperation with local participating groups to prevent the introduction and spread of aquatic invasive species, plants and animals, from water body to water body. Lake Hosts

-Educate visiting boaters about aquatic invasive species (plants and animals)

-Conduct a brief boater survey

-Teach boaters the “Clean, Drain & Dry” method for preventing the spread of aquatic invasive species

-Conduct courtesy boat and trailer inspections to remove all hitchhiking aquatic invasive species

-Send suspicious species fragments to the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services for identification

We pay 2-3 Lake Hosts per year to work at the State Boat Ramp from June to Labor Day. The BLIA has traditionally supplemented the paid Lake Hosts with volunteers. If you are interested being a volunteer for the Lake Host Program contact us at blia@beaver-lake.org

The BLIA will train anyone who wants to volunteer for either of these programs.

Spring Clean-up will be Saturday, April 22 (which, by no coincidence, is Earth Day) at 9:00AM. As is tradition, we will meet at the Pond Rd. bridge, clean that area and the spread out across the lake . The more volunteers we have the more area we can clean. Please join us.

In May we kick off our 2017-2018 Membership Drive. We had a record year thanks to the efforts of Steven Anthony who I know is hoping to beat the BLIA record this year. Look for your renewal in the mail.

Rob Tompkins

President, BLIA