The Upper Saranac Foundation (USF) dive team has wrapped up another successful season of aquatic invasive species (AIS) management. While their focus remains Upper Saranac Lake (USL), they also worked upstream in Fish Creek Ponds, Square Pond, and Follensby Clear Pond, as well as in regional waters like Lake Placid, Lake Kiwassa, Moody Pond, and Friends Lake.
Managing invasives in the lake’s tributaries is critical to preventing their spread downstream to USL. Providing services to other lake associations also helps offset program costs while reducing the regional threat.
Thanks to sustained effort, milfoil—once the lake’s most pressing issue—has been reduced to a rarity. “On Lower Saranac, milfoil is so abundant I see it everywhere,” said first-year diver Lena Keal, whose parents have a boat moored there. “On Upper Saranac, it’s now so rare it’s increasingly hard to find.”
So why does the Foundation keep managing milfoil? Because without annual control, even a small population can quickly rebound. Efforts on USL have already been scaled back, with more focus now on prevention measures such as watershed stewards and watercraft decontamination.
As veteran diver Bryce Davison notes of his family’s camp on Oseetah Lake: “Milfoil grows everywhere—except in the boating channel, and that’s only because the propellers cut it up like a lawn mower.”
USF’s AIS program has become a national model for effective, science-based invasive species control—powered by the expertise and dedication of its dive team.
