Introduction to Invasive Hydrilla
Deanna Doohaluk whispered, “Boys and their toys,” Wednesday as those gathered to treat for highly invasive hydrilla in Ginger Creek tinkered with the motorized backpack spreaders for the herbicide. They weren’t all boys. Claire Snyder headed the multi-organizational group in Oak Brook.
The Problem of Hydrilla
“We’ve been working since fall on plans,” said Snyder, a natural resources specialist for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, as the group assembled when showers moved past. “It can spread quite easily. Rip off a leaf and it floats away [and establishes downstream].” A private contractor for a homeowners group detected hydrilla last fall upstream near the headwaters of Ginger Creek, a roughly 4-mile tributary of Salt Creek, a tributary of the Des Plaines River.
Current State of Hydrilla in Ginger Creek
In follow-ups, rooted hydrilla was found in the upper portions of Ginger Creek. The middle portion had fragments. So far, the lower portion, where it joins Salt Creek, is free of hydrilla. “Goal is to have it never spread here,” Snyder said.
Claire Snyder spreads SonarOne herbicide to combat invasive hydrilla on Ginger Creek.
Understanding Hydrilla
This is only the second time hydrilla was found in Illinois. The first was in 2019 in a Lake County detention pond. “It was much smaller and easier to contain, there was just a pipe [to spread it],” she said. “Here is a larger system.” The IDNR describes hydrilla (hydrilla verticillata)as “one of the world’s worst aquatic weeds. It can grow up to an inch per day and form dense mats of vegetation with negative impacts on boating, fishing, swimming, native aquatic wildlife, and property values.”
Invasive hydrilla found last fall in Ginger Creek.
Multi-Agency Response
In northeastern United States, some efforts to control hydrilla turned into multi-million dollar projects. That explains the Illinois Hydrilla Task Force starting in 2014 and being updated in 2015. Plans were in place for Illinois’ first two finds of hydrilla. Hence the multi-organizational response to the Ginger Creek find. Beside Snyder and Doohaluk, The Conservation Foundation/DuPage River Salt Creek Workgroup, there were Dan Grigas, fisheries ecologist for the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County, IDNR fisheries biologists Seth Love, Andy Plauck and Brennan Caputo, IDNR Natural Resources coordinator Andrew Wieland, Lake County Health Department’s James Fitzgerald and Gerard Urbanozo (observing and learning), and aquatic biologist/technical support from SePRO, Keegan Lund.
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