Quebec urged to help in fight against ‘zombie plant’
The Quebec government must act immediately to protect the province’s lakes and rivers from a particularly nasty invasive species called Eurasian watermilfoil, nicknamed the “zombie plant,” before it’s too late, a coalition of municipalities, businesspeople, scientists, tourism groups and environmentalists said Monday.
The Union of Quebec Municipalities and a recently formed group called the Alliance for a National Program to Manage Eurasian Watermilfoil called a news conference in a downtown Montreal hotel to demand help from the Quebec government to fight the plant, which has invaded between 200 and 500 of Quebec’s 10,000 accessible lakes so far.
They are calling on the province to launch a province-wide program before the end of this year that would include pilot projects to test methods for prevention and eradication, funding for research and a wide-reaching awareness program.
“We need a massive awareness program so that within the next few months, every Quebecer should be able to identify the zombie plant and know what they should do to ensure it doesn’t spread,” said JeanClaude Thibault, a spokesperson for the Alliance and president of the waterway protection group Rappel. “It is very simple; wash it off. Wash your boat, your boat trailer, your motor … look underneath your paddle boat. We have to get into the habit in Quebec of never coming out of or going into a lake without doing that check.”
The plant, which originates in Asia and Africa, grows in water from one metre to 10 metres deep. Introduced into the U.S. in the 19th century, Eurasian watermilfoil reached Canada’s Great Lakes by the 1950s and has been present in the St. Lawrence River since 1971.
Because of climate change and human activity such as boating, the plant is invading Quebec’s waterways at such a rate that the small towns, villages and cottage associations that have been trying to fight it are now waving a white flag and calling for government help.
“The waterways belong to everybody in Quebec,” said Joé Deslauriers, mayor of St-Donat and vice-president of the rural municipalities caucus of the UMQ. “But our (rural) municipalities are having to put in place rules and measures according to the capacity to pay of our voters, and it’s not enough to fight this menace.”
Eurasian watermilfoil is called a zombie plant because one of the ways it spreads is through fragmentation; bits of stem break off the plant twice during the summer season and rejuvenate to create new plants. Humans help the process when stem fragments are caught in a boat’s propeller, for example, and are then easily transferred to other waterways.
Chemical herbicides have been used to try to control the plant in other jurisdictions, Thibault said, but the secondary effects are damaging to other plants and organisms.
The group wants the government to invest in pilot projects and research to determine the best methods of eradication and prevention of propagation.