Species of Houghton Lake

 

A Special Thanks

The long-term protection of Houghton Lake’s is in part by the hard work of the biological services firm JFNew.

Before the Conservancy acquired the lake,  JFNew staff had worked extensively with its former owners on a restoration and management plan and an instrumental part in the meeting of the owners to the Conservancy.

As straightforward as the Houghton Lake acquisition was, the restoration of this “opportunity of a lifetime” will be a very involved process. Two years of planning and preparation already taken place and we are moving on towards restoration projects that will slowly get Houghton Lake back to its natural state. Years more of restoration work and intensive follow-up management will be necessary, but, in the end, absolutely worth it. 

Restoration Efforts at Houghton Lake

The Nature Conservancy's restoration goals for Houghton Lake are deceptively simple. To the maximum extent possible, we want to restore groundwater flow and quality to the lake and wetlands. To accomplish this we will have to remove buried tiles from the agricultural fields and fill in many of the ditches that currently intercept groundwater before it discharges to the lake. This will move more water through the lake itself, which will help to flush out chemicals and nutrients from adjacent farmfields that have accumulated over the decades. The lake currently has an annual flush of algae which should decrease as nutrients leach out of the system over the years. This will improve habitat for native fish, amphibians and reptiles as the water clears over time.

There is one disruption that we will not restore: the natural lake water level. Although the outlet of the lake is man-made and has dropped the lake several feet, we will not manipulate it. The wetland habitats that have developed on the exposed lake bottom are too valuable and it would be foolish to drown out these high-quality habitats.

The adjacent fields will be restored to appropriate native wetland and grassland communities. The hydrologic restoration will create very wet muck soils in the valley bottom, which we hope to restore to sedge meadows, wet prairies and fen communities. This will increase habitat for many wetland species, especially rare snakes and turtles at the site. The rolling uplands will be planted to prairie to reduce agricultural runoff to the wetlands and to create additional habitat.

Preparing the Land at Houghton Lake

As we mentioned before, preparing the tract for restoration has been a long, arduous task. Eradicating the invasive species from the land has been our first task. In the spring/summer of 2007, stewardship worked to remove reed canary grass from the ditch and field edges. Attention will soon be turned to common buckthorn and the native cottonwood trees lining the ditches. Though a native species, cottonwoods must be downed to reduce the number of seeds that shower the landscap and potentially turning our restoration into a dense thicket. 

This spring (2009), our invasive specie removal efforts have shifted towards purple loosestrife. Efforts to fight it and stem its invasion are costly, time-intensive and often unsuccessful.  To help battle purple loosestrife at Houghton Lake, we have turned to some unlikely partners. European beetles, Galerucella calmariensis and G. pusilla, have been used since the early 1990s in Indiana as biological control agents for purple loosestrife. In Indiana and numerous sites throughout the Great Lakes, biocontrol programs have been reported to have significantly reduced dense infestations, generally within five years of the initial release. Extensive research and testings has shown that these beetles would not pester other plants. Therefore , once populations of purple loosestrife start to decline, so will the beetles.

Restoring the hydrology of the site and planting the fields with native vegetation will begin once the invasive species are under control. Check back here for more updates on our restoration efforts we will be implementing at Houghton Lake to increase habitat for native plants and animals.

Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photo © The Nature Conservancy (species benefitting from the restoration of Houghton Lake).