Weevil question could be answered on Lake Pend Oreille

SANDPOINT - The years-long debate over whether weevils would be an effective means of controlling Eurasian milfoil in Lake Pend Oreille stands to get an injection of cold, hard scientific facts.

Several groups are banding together to promote a biological control project featuring the milfoil-munching insects.

Partners for Milfoil Control has secured has secured $90,000 in funding

 and in-kind donations and needs another $85,000 to fully fund the project.

"We see this as a great opportunity to investigate non-herbicide control of milfoil in our lake while contributing to the body of research on weevils as a control method," Diane Williams, executive director for the Tri-State Water Quality Council, said in a statement announcing the effort.

Tri-State, a nonprofit, is serving as fiscal agent for the project. Other partners include Panhandle Environmental League, Selkirk Conservation Alliance, Sandpoint Mothers for Safe Water and the Idaho Conservation League.

Three of the partner groups hold seats on the Bonner County Aquatic Invasive Species Task Force, a diverse board which recommends treatment plans to the county commission.

Last year, the task force unsuccessfully sought funding from the Idaho State Department of Agriculture to purchase weevils and study their effectiveness in combating Eurasian milfoil. More than $5 million in taxpayer dollars has been spent over the last three years trying to eradicate the weed in Priest and Pend Oreille lakes without success.

"In these times, we need to be more careful about how we spend every penny," Heather Lewis Sebring of Sandpoint Mothers for Safe Water said in a statement. "Yet, millions of dollars are being spent on herbicides that are not succeeding in eradicating milfoil. It raises budgetary and health concerns about the long-term consequences of using herbicides year after year."

The project got a jump start with a $25,000 grant from the Sangham Foundation, a private conservation-oriented foundation with ties to Bonner County. Sebring figures that if everyone bought two weevils at a $1 apiece, the project would have enough funding to get started in 2009.

Project officials say the lake already has a native weevil in low densities. Under the project, weevils would be collected thousands more would be produced in a culturing facility. The insects would then be stocked in milfoil beds, where they would feed on and burrow into the plant's stems.

Although weevils do not completely eliminate milfoil, they do kill it and stunt the plant's growth, which controls its spread and gives native aquatic plants a chance to re-establish, according to project officials.

It's hoped the two-year research project will ultimately bring about the acceptance of weevils as a viable control method in Idaho, Williams said on Tuesday.

"That's why we were really interested in the research end of it - to show one way or another whether weevils can work in our environment," said Williams.

Concordia College in Minnesota, which has experience in weevil projects in the Midwest, has expressed an interest in conducting the research, Williams said.