The goal of this project is to experimentally reintroduce seedling hardstem bulrushes at many locations along the lakeshore, and on an offshore reef site where this species formerly grew. In this program landowners are helping in planting, observing, recording and protecting the conditions of their plants over a multiyear period with the objective to determine the desirable long-term conditions for establishing new bulrush populations. Bulrushes are being planted in conjunction with our fishsticks program in that seedling bulrushes were planted among fishsticks as well as among native shoreline plants to provide protection from animals foraging seedling plants.

A three year expenses report of the Kangaroo Lake Fish Stick program.

FISH STICKS, an in-lake best practice, are large woody habitat structures that utilize whole trees grouped together, resulting in the placement of more than 1 tree per 50 feet of shoreline. Fish Sticks are anchored to the shore and are partially or fully submerged. Fish sticks are not tree drops since the trees utilized for the projects come from further than 35 feet from shore, thus they don’t “rob from the bank” of trees that may otherwise grow and fall in naturally. In the winters of 2015 and 2016, our Kangaroo Lake Association (KLA) volunteers installed 45 trees in 15 separate locations. The 35’-50’ trees were anchored in clusters of 2-3 trees. These non-native trees were gifted and harvested from The Nature Conservancy’s land on the lake.

The product of our program will be placing tree-drops along the shoreline of our members who participate in the program. At present we do not know how many members will participate. The language of “tree drops” was replaced with “Fish Sticks” as our various publics learned about this effort. Every year was a challenge to find hosts. Some “hosts” added multiple complexes (two 3-tree clusters). Year I had 6 hosts; Year II had 5 new hosts plus we added 1 tree to the 2-tree complexes from Year I; and Year III had 8 new hosts. In total, we had 19 “hosts” for 24, 3-tree or 4-tree complexes—see Attachment 1. A newly created brochure and cover letter was sent to every landowner on the lake—not just our KLA members. This both educated all landowners and “motivated additional hosts to participate.

Kangaroo Lake Association proposes to undertake a shoreline preservation and restoration planning and implementation project. Kangaroo Lake Association will obtain and disseminate information, conduct educational opportunities, develop action plans and begin implementation of shoreline restoration activities by assisting lake land owners to place dropped trees in the water along their shoreline and assessing and planting bulrush along shoreline where they once thrived.

Shoreland Restoration