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Summertime in the BelgradesContentsfor Printing Article Summaries |
Here's To The Courtesy Boat Inspectors!
by Esther J. Perne Meet Katie Jacobs, one of twenty-five Courtesy Boat Inspectors hired in 2008 by the Belgrade Regional Conservation Alliance to work on seven Public Boat Launches in the Belgrade chain of lakes. Katie lives in Waterville, attends Waterville High School and is representative of the summer crew hired to prevent invasive plants from entering, or spreading among, these lakes; she attended a training course at the beginning of the summer on how to check boats for hitchhiking plants and how to recognize invasives, especially milfoil. Thanks to Katie, a substantial fragment of Eurasian Milfoil was intercepted recently at the Great Pond Boat Launch. It was wrapped around the propeller of a boat from Massachusetts and discovered during the routine CBI check.
The CBI Program began in 2002 with a few volunteers and has grown to a $60,000 budget, financed by state, town, lake association, and individual funding. In 2008, roughly 6,000 inspections will be conducted, 2,000 of them on Lake Messalonskee, a strategy credited with significantly curtailing and containing invasives in the Belgrades. Courtesy Boat Inspections end with Labor Day. After that, it's up to individual boaters to always check their boat, trailer and equipment for plant fragments before launch and after take-out.
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