RED DEER — Foreign plants, microbes and animals are moving into the land and waters of North America.
When they are found in the water, everyone is hurt, says the director of the invasive species action network in Montana.
“Anybody who uses water stands to suffer economically,” said Bob Wiltshire at a recent Alberta invasive species conference in Red Deer.
By the time these foreigners are discovered, it may be too late.
“Control is almost impossible when you talk about critters. If you get snails or mussels introduced into the water, you are not managing them, you are not controlling them,” Wiltshire said.
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“By the time you detect them, you don’t have a response available, except maybe a quarantine. It is very critical that you focus on prevention.”
The invaders are often introduced inadvertently on boats, fishing equipment and boots.
Many aquatic invaders come from the same Eurasian latitudes as North America, where the climate and ecology is similar. They often arrive on ocean-going freight and cruise lines, hitching a ride on the hull or in ballast water that is required to balance a ship. The water is dumped when the ship docks.
“San Francisco Bay is considered the most invaded habitat in North America,” Wiltshire said.
Invasive species could arrive in the fresh water of Western Canada, Idaho and Montana via the Great Lakes.
The St. Lawrence Seaway opened to international shipping in 1959 and opened the Great Lakes to ocean traffic. There are nearly 200 non-native species in the lakes, and they have started to spread into inland waters through recreational boating, fishing equipment and bait.
Zebra and quagga mussels are among the worst.
“Zebra and quagga mussels are really what is driving the invasive species programs in the western U.S.,” Wiltshire said.
They are closely related, look like tiny clams about the size of fingernails and were first found in Lake Mead in the lower Colorado River basin in 2007.
They have also been found in Utah, Nevada and Colorado, but not yet in the states bordering Canada.
A single mussel filters a litre of water per day, and also consumes the phytoplankton that native fish fingerlings require for food.
They have strong adhesive threads and can colonize and attach themselves to surfaces such as grates and the inside of water pipes. They also choke water filtration systems.
Boat inspections are the norm in the northwest. Mussels and plants found tangled in equipment are removed with high pressure washers. Boaters are advised to allow the equipment to dry for five days before entering another lake or river.
Idaho performed 47,000 inspections last year, which found 25 boats with mussels. Six were destined for British Columbia.
This year, inspections have found 12 mussel-fouled boats, one of which was heading to Alberta, said Tom Woolf, aquatic plants program manager with Idaho’s agriculture department.
Similar inspections are carried out at Waterton Park gates in southwestern Alberta.
All U.S. and Canadian authorities use the same public campaign, advising the public to clean, drain and dry their equipment.
“We need people to act differently in the outdoors. The bottom line is we need them to be clean,” Woolf said.
Awareness alone does not generate success. People need to be told what to do if they find these invaders.
Other problems have already arrived in Western Canada and the United States, including a single celled algae called didymo, or rock snot. It feels like wet wool and reproduces rapidly to cover shallow stream bottoms. It changes stream flows and may affect native fish and plants when it clogs water intakes.
Viral hemorrhagic septicemia attacks most species of fish with no known solution.
Eurasian water milfoil forms dense mats that clog waterways, crowd out native species and destroy their food sources.
Swimmers can get entangled in it, and control methods may harm other species.
