Hello LSC. We'd like to give you a quick recap of the first Lake St. Catherine Vermont Invasive Patrollers (VIP) paddle which took place this morning.

The focus of this program is early detection of aquatic invasive species (AIS) before they can become established in a waterbody.

First - a THANK YOU to our participants: Kim, Gloria, Marcia, and Steve. We appreciate you all taking part in our first paddle - we hope you enjoyed it!

On this first introductory paddle, we used underwater viewers to find and identify many of our native plants, while keeping an eye out for invasive plants or animals around the boat launch. Patrolling the boat launch is a great place to kickoff this program, as it is a high-risk area for invasive species introduction.

We of course found some of our common natives like elodea, Robbins' pondweed, and white water lily, and the invasive eurasian watermilfoil.

But we also found some of our more interesting ones... we found:

- american eel-grass - with the female plants having a coiling stem which resembles a corkscrew

- watershield - which has floating, elliptical shaped leaves that have a clear jelly-like undercoating

- ribbon-leaf pondweed - which has two different leaf types: submerged long and slender grass like leaves and floating, elliptical leaves. 

As part of this Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation program, we will be filing out and filing a report this evening.

We'll plan another VIP paddle in mid-September, and we'll select and post a date soon. We hope you'll join us - it was a lot of fun! If you'd like to learn more about this new program on LSC, please visit the VIP page on our website: https://www.lakestcatherine.org/vermont-invasive-patrollers

If you'd like to learn more about the interesting aquatic plants in LSC, check out the book "Aquatic Flora of Northern New England" by Donald J. Padgett. It contains great photos and descriptions of native (and invasive) aquatic plants that you'd find in LSC.

> Aquatic plant photos from Native Plant Trust: https://gobotany.nativeplanttrust.org