Eurasian Water Milfoil (EWM) finally invaded Deerskin. The Wisconsin DNR has confirmed the identification of EWM in the fall of 2021. EWM is an aggressive aquatic plant that is not native to Northern Wisconsin. It is considered highly invasive and has the ability crowd out native vegetation and take over the lake making boating, swimming, and fishing difficult.
Many of our surrounding lakes have been invaded by EWM (e.g. the Eagle River chain, North and South Twin, Long Lake, Anvil Lake, and Sand Lake.) The DNR says that we will never eradicate EWM—we can only learn to manage it. According to the DNR, EWM behaves differently from lake to lake. Some lakes become overrun with EWM in a few years while in others it comes and goes much like native vegetation. There are several treatment options that we might explore. Chemical treatment has been used very successfully in the Eagle River chain and on North Twin. Hand pulling has been used by scuba divers on Anvil Lake. Mechanical harvesting is used on larger lakes in southern Wisconsin.
Your Deerskin Lake Association Board of Directors met twice with the DNR last fall regarding creating a plan to deal with EWM. The DNR has accepted our lake into a program called “Directed Lakes Program”. The goal of the DLP is to create a baseline measurement of our lake. This summer the DNR will survey the lake aquatic vegetation, the shoreline, woody debris, and water quality of our lake at no cost to us! When all the data comes in from the DLP we can then create an action plan to deal with the EWM. Although we are anxious to attack this on our own, we would lose DNR funding by jumping the gun. We have a contact to begin removing the invasive milfoil as soon as we get approval.We will keep communication lines open via our various digital platforms during this process.
In the meantime, boaters are asked to avoid motoring over the EWM patch—as EWM can reproduce and spread more rapidly from fragments cut up by the prop. A map of the area north of the buoys is below:
Deerskin Lake - Eurasian Water Milfoil (EWM) patch