[Stuart Carlton]
Teach me about the Great Lakes. Teach me about the Great Lakes. Welcome back to Teach Me About the Great Lakes, a twice monthly podcast in which I, a Great Lakes novice, ask people who are smarter and harder working than I am to teach me all about the Great Lakes.

My name is Stuart Carlton and I know a lot about building the seven wonders of the world because we've been playing Seven Wonders Architects a ton over spring break. But I don't know a lot about the Great Lakes because the Great Lakes weren't even around perhaps for some of these wonders. No, they probably were.

Anyway, the point is, I don't know. That's the whole point of this show. Joined today by Natty Morrison, communication coordinator for Illinois Indiana Sea Grant.

Natty, what's up?

[Natty Morrison]
Hey, Stuart. Just here on campus. It's spring break for the students, but not for me.

I'm here working and I'm loving the fact that that means I can probably go get lunch without having to wait in line for a long time. But who knows? Maybe there'll still be a line for me to enjoy.

[Stuart Carlton]
But maybe there's still... I mean, if you want a line, we can arrange that. We have interns.

[Natty Morrison]
You have? Oh, I was like, I didn't realize that you had that power to arrange a line. No, no, I don't.

[Stuart Carlton]
All right. Anyway, we like to start our show with an Ask Natty question, and this one's coming from me. It's timely, although by the time the listeners hear this, it won't be, but I don't care.

Natty's actual job, the reason he's here is because he organizes our annual March Madness office bracket. So Natty, what is the secret to selecting a truly choice upset for March Madness?

[Natty Morrison]
Oh, I love that question. So selecting a truly choice, you know, you always got to choose a 10 over a 7. You try to choose an 11 over a 6 or a 12 over 5.

That's where there's a lot of mismatches. But also, I don't really know if there's... I think everybody likes to think that they can read the tea leaves and they know exactly what's going to go, what's going to happen.

But it's the best part about March Madness, man, is that nobody has any clue what's going to happen. And it's just five guys versus five guys or five women versus five women, depending on both the men's and women's brackets. But yeah, I think you just look for the mismatches.

And then the other one is you look to see which team is the better three-point shooting team, because if you're dropping threes in March, you've got to be dancing.

[Stuart Carlton]
Sounds good. Excellent. Last year, I think I finished in the third behind former cigarette director Thomas Hook, who came in second, I think.

Did he end up in second?

[Natty Morrison]
I think so. And then I think Joel, our graphic designer, won. Yeah.

[Stuart Carlton]
And so after having lost to Joel, Thomas quit Sea Grant immediately thereafter. He's like, that's it. I'm out.

Anyway, March Madness is not why we're here. We are here to talk invasives. But first we'll have some transitional music.

Our guest today is Janice Gilbert. Janice is the founder and executive director of the Invasive Phragmites Control Center, or the Control Century, as Carolyn says, over in Ontario, Canada. Janice, welcome on to the show.

[Janice Gilbert]
Hello, Stuart and Natty. Thank you for having me.

[Stuart Carlton]
We're so glad you're here. So we talk about invasives a lot, but when people think invasives in the Great Lakes, they tend to think of two things. They tend to think of mussels, and they tend to think of carp.

Mussels, which are in the lake, carp, which we don't believe are, or if they are, are not in breeding paratype numbers anyway. But plants are also an invasive that are here, right? And so tell us about invasive plants in the Great Lakes.

Is it a significant problem in the area?

[Janice Gilbert]
It absolutely is, and has been for a long time. We've had a number of invasions over the centuries, like milfoil. Milfoil has been here a long time.

The one I'm going to be chatting about, invasive phragmites, is more of a, I guess, a recent invader in terms of the age of the Great Lakes, but it's certainly been here for a while. And it's significantly problematic along the Great Lakes.

[Stuart Carlton]
Excellent. And so we want to get into that. But first, let's talk big picture for our listeners, because I feel like oftentimes people define this differently.

So let's just go over our vocab. So when you say like an invasive species, to you, is that any non-native species, or does it have to have other qualities as well?

[Janice Gilbert]
Yeah, that's a really good question. I qualify it as a problematic one, because we have a lot of plants here in the States and Canada that are not native, but they're not a problem. They kind of tend to behave themselves.

And then we have ones that come from other continents that really are aggressive and cause a lot of issues. And those are the ones I term invasive.

[Stuart Carlton]
And the problems are things like ecosystem disruption, pushing out native species, and that kind of stuff?

[Janice Gilbert]
Correct. So they basically out-compete our native plants and cause major issues in regard to that. Okay.

[Stuart Carlton]
And so the problem with the native plants, so in the Great Lakes ecosystem, plants tend to serve down the food chain, right? Or food web. Are we supposed to say chain or web?

I don't know. The point is the food system, they tend to be down there. What are some other benefits of plants in the Great Lakes than you think?

[Janice Gilbert]
Yeah, you're absolutely right. And aquatic plants are very similar to terrestrial. They provide oxygen.

And you think about water body, that's so significant for the truly aquatic animals like fish and freshwater mussels. That's where they get their oxygen source from. But beyond that, they provide food, food source.

They support aquatic invertebrates, which provides, you mentioned the food web, provides a lot of food for a lot of fish and waterfowl and all the other aquatic creatures and semi-aquatic turtles and frogs and toads. And also to the vegetation for, I mentioned waterfowl as well, like wild rice, which some humans also eat as well.

[Natty Morrison]
Talking about more aquatic plants, so we know like sort of what purposes they serve, what has really drawn you to want to study these specifically in your career?

[Janice Gilbert]
Yeah, for sure. And actually, I didn't really get into a lot of the benefits they provide. Sorry, I mentioned the oxygen piece of it, but so much more than that.

They'll absorb nutrients and contaminants that are in the water that humans put in our water bodies. They'll also slow down water flow. So that removes a lot of the sediment from the water.

It clears the water. And they're really important along our lake shores, like the emerged plants, they'll intercept the wave energy. So it protects our shorelines.

So there's a lot of values for humans as well with the aquatic plants. And what tends to bother me a lot is I hear them referred to as weeds. And they're not weeds, they're native plants that have a really important purpose for ensuring that our lakes and water bodies remain healthy.

And my interest in the, I'm a wetland ecologist, so the plants are the structure. They're it. Whatever diversity of plants you have, that increases your wildlife so much more.

It just makes the ecosystem healthier. So when you're in a wetland that's just got one plant in it, one species of plant, it's not a very healthy wetland ecosystem. And it's really deprived of what should be there.

It just doesn't provide good habitat for our native wildlife.

[Stuart Carlton]
Because different kinds of plants, right? They provide different types of, basically different types of structure and different animals or even different other plants need different types of structure to either hide in or nest in or what have you.

[Janice Gilbert]
That's absolutely correct. And so when we're talking about aquatic plants, we do have categories for that structure. We have the submerged aquatic plants.

So some might be rooted, like pondweed, or they might be free floating like coontail. You might have floating plants like water lily. And then you will have the emergent, like the bulrushes or the cattail.

[Stuart Carlton]
Emergent means it sticks out?

[Janice Gilbert]
Sticks out of the water column into the air. Yeah. And each of those different types of forms of plants provide different structures.

So if you think about it, for a little fish swimming in the water, if it's swimming through submerged aquatic vegetation, it's providing habitat structure for hiding from bigger fish or other predators and food source, because that's where a lot of the aquatic invertebrates might be, the little bugs that they could feed on. If you think about a white water lily or water lilies on the surface, they provide shade for what's down below. So in the scorching summer days, it's providing a little bit more cool water for the aquatic animals and freshwater mussels and some shade value there.

And then the emergent plants like bulrush, if you've ever seen a dragonfly out there and they're laying their eggs on them, the eggs hatch and they become a nymph, they're aquatic. But when it's time for them to turn into an adult, they crawl back up to the surface on the reed and you can see them coming out the back. It's just so fascinating.

They fly. It's just a miracle really to observe this. So the structure is really, really important for a lot of those but even birds need the structure to nest in.

A muskrat will need the vegetation to build their muskrat dens and on the dens, the turtles can bask and maybe some birds will nest. So it's all really connected. It all comes back to the vegetation.

[Stuart Carlton]
So I'm thinking, you're talking a lot about wetlands and all these things you associate with the shore, but one of the stories of the Great Lakes is they're like these huge inland oceans. And so when I go up, I am going up to Chi-Town, the second city, the window city, the window city, the windy city.

[Natty Morrison]
There are a lot of windows there.

[Stuart Carlton]
A lot of windows. Known for windows, famously. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

In a couple of days, we're going to go with the kids and freeze our butt off trying to find something to do. But I'm going to look out and I'm going to see into the vastness of Lake Michigan. Are there plants like in the middle?

I don't see any. There's not those kind of plants. You're not having water lilies in the center of Lake Michigan.

Is there a plant story like in the center of the Great Lakes or is it mostly around the edges where they matter?

[Janice Gilbert]
Yeah, that's an excellent question. So yeah, there's a water depth to our aquatic plants because you think about they can only translocate so much and then there's too much pressure. If you ever scuba dive or dove down in deeper water, you feel that pressure.

It's kind of similar with plants. They can only survive just about a certain depth, about two meters. And then, excuse me, beyond that, it's pretty much non-vegetated.

So the near shore is exceedingly critical for our Great Lakes.

[Stuart Carlton]
Because that's the one area where they are, right?

[Janice Gilbert]
Correct.

[Stuart Carlton]
Yeah.

And then interesting. So the other thing we hear about a lot is Lake Michigan specifically and the other ones are a lot clearer than they used to be thanks to the mussels. In fact, my understanding is that Lake Michigan is now the clearest of the lakes, even more so than Superior.

Does that affect the plant life, the mussels filtering through? Does that affect that as well?

[Janice Gilbert]
Yeah, when these invasive species such as the mussels come in, they really totally alter our Great Lakes. So you think clearing them up would be a good thing, but they're depriving a lot of wildlife. Usually the fish populations, for instance, the whitefish, they're young, a year, can't survive.

They can't get enough food. So they're massive filter feeders. So removing the nutrients from the system where the plants help, particularly the ones that can root, they can get nutrients out of the sediment.

And when they die off, they can provide nutrients back into the system as well. So that's a really important component of the vegetation, the life-death cycle.

[Natty Morrison]
Is there a progression for an invasive species to where it becomes, when you first notice it or you're first aware of it, to where it becomes a problem? What does that progression look like?

[Stuart Carlton]
Like a threshold or something.

[Natty Morrison]
Yeah, exactly.

[Janice Gilbert]
It's an excellent question because for a lot of our problematic invasive species, we don't really recognize they're a problem until they've reached that threshold where they are a significant issue. And the best time to control them is when they're just getting started. And at the beginning of the program, you mentioned the carp that some of them are actually, they have the problematic carp that we don't want in the Great Lakes.

We just know we just don't want one, none, none, zero, zero. And so we're well aware of that. And if we're paying attention to what's happening elsewhere with different species and we see they're a problem there, that should let us know that these ones we don't want in our water body.

We can't have them. So if we find a little pocket, get rid of it, eradicate it. There's a lot of attention going to the early detection, rapid response.

[Natty Morrison]
I see. Do these ecosystems eventually, if we were to let an invasive species just run rampant in a situation, would that ecosystem eventually adapt to it or would the ecosystem change so much due to that invasive species that it would become unrecognizable to us?

[Janice Gilbert]
Yes. 100%. And that's why there's such concern about them and why there's just so much effort to do the monitoring and have this rapid response to control them.

It has to be because the Great Lakes, they've already changed significantly. And I like to say like the Great Lakes aren't great anymore. They have a lot of pressure on them right now.

We have to do so much to get them back to being healthy. But there's some species like, you know, it's kind of like when the horse has left the barn, you're not going to get back in with the freshwater mussels and the sea lamprey. There's no way.

We don't have a fighting chance. So trying other mechanisms to at least drop their populations down so they're more manageable, but we're never going to eradicate. And we, the humans, are always going to have to intercede to be the pressure point because the natural system just can't put in that, get that balance back so that our native plants can survive with these invasive ones.

[Natty Morrison]
Got it.

[Stuart Carlton]
Yeah. Some of that depends on time scale though, right?

Like I think part of what it is, is we're trying to keep it in a, or maybe this is my thought. What do you think about this? That we're trying to keep these ecosystems in some semblance of what we perceive as their natural state, partially because we've built our human societies around them, right?

I think invasive species, like if you gave it three or 400,000 years, like evolution would do its thing for better or worse, but it would radically change the ecosystems as they are. So some of it to me strikes me as very human, or I'm not saying it's bad, but I think some of the desire to return these ecosystems to kind of their pre-human state is a little bit human-oriented. Is that fair to say?

[Janice Gilbert]
Yes, it is. But I don't believe we are ever going to be able to return a system back pre-human. That's not even a feasible concept.

I think for folks like myself that care about our wetlands and these really valuable ecosystems, why we want to maintain diversity in them, healthy plant populations, is because if we allow these systems to be overrun by one particular invasive plant, we lose the habitat value. So already for wetlands in Ontario, 25% of our species at risk need wetlands, and we've already drained so many fields, so many in, we've lost them on the landscape, so the remaining wetlands that are left are now being threatened by this invasive Phragmites that's now taking over the habitat they need. And that's what got me involved so many years ago.

Alarm bells were going off when I had to spend endless hours in high-density Phragmites not finding any wildlife, when I knew what should be in these wetland systems. That's what we're losing. And my argument for control is us humans brought this plant, and the wildlife that rely on these habitats, they're defenseless.

So we brought it here, we have to control it. And I just think it's our obligation to do so.

[Stuart Carlton]
Excellent. We're going to take a short break, and when we come back, Janice is going to tell us all about Phragmites. You're listening to Teach Me About the Great Lakes.

Welcome back to Teach Me About the Great Lakes. We're speaking with Janice Gilbert about aquatic invasive plants, which is kind of a new topic for us. And Janice, you were just talking about Phragmites, which is this invasive plant, and that you've been working on for quite some time now.

How did you get started? Well, first of all, what is Phragmites, big picture, and then tell us how you got started working on it.

[Janice Gilbert]
Phragmites, the common name for it is common reed. It's a reed, it's a grass, actually a perennial grass, and it comes from Europe. And it grows in these large colonies.

It spreads underground through the roots and rhizomes, and just new shoots will pop up every year. And eventually, all you have in an area is just Phragmites, nothing else, no other native plants. And how I became involved in this, I actually went to Ohio State.

And during one of the wetland courses, they were talking about Phragmites on the eastern seaboard, and how bad it was, it was close to wetlands. And I, oh wow, that's not good. I had no clue it was a problem on the Great Lakes until I was assessing a wetland on Lake Erie back in 2005.

And I got into these massive stands of high density Phragmites. And I said the alarm bells were going off, because along the edge, I could still see bird nests, I could still see tracks and scat evidence that wildlife were using the habitat. But then I got into the interior, and I likened them to a dead zone, like there was nothing in there.

It was hot, and it was humid, and it was just not pleasant for me to be in. And obviously, the wildlife weren't able to utilize the Phragmites as well. There's been a lot of research on the impacts since that time.

But that's kind of how I got involved. We have a problem here. We have to do something about this.

[Stuart Carlton]
And so when the Phragmites moves in, it generally grows on the shoreline, right? And it creates, it's kind of, I guess you're describing to me like a desert, you know, a planted desert for lack of a better term.

[Janice Gilbert]
Yeah, it seems that way when you're in the interior. So they start on the sort of muck, like exposed moist sediment, but they can grow in water. I've seen them in water close to two meters deep, it's an incredible plant.

But I've also seen on dry areas too. And it can send its roots and rhizomes down at least 10 feet, you know, to get in dry areas to get the water it needs from nutrients, whatever. But it has a lot of strategies for surviving deeper water or dry areas.

And the very first control project I did, the Phragmites was over five meters tall. It was crazy tall and thick. It was amazing.

It's an amazing plant. There's a lot of biomass there. And what you see above ground, you can multiply it three, four times below.

So there's a lot of plant material there with Phragmites.

[Natty Morrison]
And so could you maybe go through some, you said that you've obviously been working to control it, but so how is it controlled? And you know, what does that process look like?

[Janice Gilbert]
Yeah, so it really depends. And a lot of people don't like my answer, but really it's site specific, how you should approach this. And my approach has always been, okay, what's the least invasive control method we can use?

So we're having this least impact on the wildlife that are surviving or the native plants, whatever, and make sure we're effectively controlling the Phragmites. So there's a timing aspect to this. But for very large stands, we need specialized equipment.

And a lot of times we need either dry land or aquatic safe herbicides. But there's a lot of volunteers also helping with Phragmites control with cutting to drown methods and some other methods that I can talk about. But yeah, so basically for the massive areas, really our only most effective method is the herbicide.

But again, apply by experienced practitioners that know what they're doing. How it's applied is really important. The timing is really important as well.

[Stuart Carlton]
Yeah, no, that's really tricky. I don't know, is it Roundup or something different that you all use?

[Janice Gilbert]
Yeah, so here in Ontario and Canada, we do not have the aquatic safe Roundup custom that you have in the States, but there was a very major research study that took place close to where I live, Long Point, where they were able to bring in a Roundup custom under a federal and provincial legislation for research authorization. Really successful program, extremely successful. But here in Ontario, thankfully, BASF were able to get Habitat Aqua, the Imazapyr water safe, approved from the Federal Health Canada and then provincially in 2021.

Prior to that, we had nothing to deal with it in the water except cutting to drown methods, which I developed back when the water level started rising in 2019, 2020. But yeah, so if the water depths are sufficient, we can use cutting to drown.

[Stuart Carlton]
So that's just what it sounds like, right? You cut it and then it can't re-establish because the plant drowns, I guess?

[Janice Gilbert]
Yeah, and that's tricky too, because the whole entire cell has to be in water, because if there's any of that plant material that's up on the dry land, it'll send the oxygen through the roots to make it back to what you've cut. And then you want to cut the stock as close to the sediment as possible or in the sediment, because that really helps deprive the below ground structures of the oxygen long enough for those roots and rhizomes to die. That's really your goal.

And all that cut material has to come out of the water and be placed on dry land to dry, so it doesn't float around and re-sprout and start somewhere else.

[Stuart Carlton]
Oh wow, that's super challenging. Wow, so it's really tricky, because yeah, you mentioned herbicides, and those are tricky around water, right? And glyphosate around up is super controversial in the U.S. I'm not an expert in that, but my current understanding is that it seems like it's probably generally okay, unless you're the one who is applying it. But there's a lot of people who disagree with that, and I have no desire to get into that right now. But even if you do think it's safe, like anytime you're talking about using stuff in water bodies, it's really tricky. But if you're not using herbicides, then you're talking about this manual labor, and that strikes me as not realistic to do that across the entire basin.

[Janice Gilbert]
It really isn't. In many areas where we've done both, but we've done the cutting to drown, it's usually in areas where we have the local community engagement, so they're also out helping us, which is really important. So without the community engagement, I don't think we're going to win the battle long term.

So basically our role is to come in and get rid of the massive amount, and then the local community, whatever minimal is left, and they can deal with whatever methods, the spading or cut to drown or whatever. With the herbicide piece, in many respects, I tell folks it is more environmentally responsible than keeping going back into a system over and over and over again to cut when you're not getting a good kill. Because you're trampling, as the frag thins out, our native plants come in, and the wildlife, and then you're impacting them too.

So the goal is, as I mentioned, get in, get rid of the frag, and then let Mother Nature heal. And so with the herbicide piece, that was a really tough one for me, I have to admit, like back when I first started, because I knew there was a water-safe herbicides available in the United States, and they're being used, and I used, as a wetland ecologist, you're like, what net bars are using herbicide in a wetland? This is horrible, right?

And then I got myself educated, and then I started doing my own research and actually controlling frag muddies with the products. And when I saw the response, when I saw the native plants recover, I knew, I knew it was okay, this actually, if it's done in a responsible manner, it's very, it's very, much more environmentally responsible. And with the glyphosate, I give a lot of talks to the public about that, because I know it's an issue, it's a concern, but I can show evidence, and there is lots of evidence, the native plant recovery is far quicker, it doesn't impact the aquatic invertebrates or whatever, it's the greatest risk is to us, the applicants, and we reduce our risk.

But I put it in the context that folks that eat processed meat or have a drink of wine or beer are getting more exposed to a carcinogen concern than us using a little bit of this product. And by a little bit, it's eight liters per hectare once. We get rid of a high amount of biomass, and after that, like, we'll get over 95-97% mortality.

And then it's just a little bit, and my goal is always eradication. So, yeah, so the herbicide piece is tricky, I understand it, but I do give a lot of presentations, and once the general public understand, you know, the risk versus reward, they tend to understand. And plus, a lot of the local community members that have been out there manually cutting and hauling frag, they want our help.

[Stuart Carlton]
One afternoon with that, and you're like, come on, spread it down.

[Janice Gilbert]
It's a lot of work, particularly when you have a hot, large, high density areas, it's just, it's overwhelming for local groups to do it manually.

[Natty Morrison]
Are most of these, like, in terms of, I don't know if you'd call these, I guess, like, areas of concern, but certainly areas, are these self-reported by residents, or by landowners, or like, how are you keeping track of where all these places are?

[Janice Gilbert]
Yeah, it's an excellent point. Well, so there's actually a couple of groups, there's the Great Lakes Phragmities Collaborative, I don't know if you're aware, but it's out of Michigan, so through the Great Lakes Commission, and then US Geological Survey, the Great Lakes Science Centre, there's an excellent website to go on, there's all kinds of information, it's been around since 2012. So, for all, so basically it's trying to share information and collaborate to get rid of frag mites along, in the Great Lakes region.

Ontario side, I'm so excited because we have a program now called the Ontario Phragmites Action Program, it's funded through our Provincial Government, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, and the Invasive Species Centre out of Sault Ste. Marie and Nature Conservancy of Canada are kind of heading it up with other partners such as Ducks Unlimited, and basically developing what's called these Phragmities Management Areas. So, we're not doing it in isolation, because we know that doesn't work.

You got to break down the boundaries of who owns what land, and I can't spray there because it's not on my property. Break those barriers down, have all the partners together, and doing it in a collaborative fashion to get rid of it off the landscape, because if it's a problem on your shoreline, if you go up onto the land, it's probably along the road, or in a drainage ditch that's flowing all this plant material to your lake, and that's how it's spreading around. So, we have to do it all collaboratively, control, and some of us are working in sensitive habitat, and others in along roads and areas where it's not so much a concern for wildlife impact.

[Stuart Carlton]
Getting that by can be really hard, I imagine though, because if people don't know about phragmities because it's actually an attractive plant, and by the water, because I'm from the southeast, so it looks like sea oats, right? And so, you're out there, and you're looking over the water, and they have the Frag Mice.

[Janice Gilbert]
So, Stuart, you haven't spent any time in Frag, because you spend like an hour in Frag, you don't think it's pretty anymore. It pokes you, and you get rips in your skin, and you get pokes in your eye, and it's not, yeah, there's a lot prettier native plants.

[Stuart Carlton]
I'm not saying that, I'm just saying it for the buy-in. It's like me, it's attractive at a distance.

[Janice Gilbert]
But I should mention, sorry, we do have a native phragmities as well.

[Stuart Carlton]
There we go.

[Janice Gilbert]
Yeah, so we have to, people do have to understand that piece of it, what the invasive strain looks like versus our native, because we don't want people controlling the native Frag Mites.

[Natty Morrison]
Wow, okay, so are those, and how similar are we talking here? Like, would an untrained eye be able to tell?

[Janice Gilbert]
So, when Frag Mites is first getting established, it might be tricky, because it tends to behave itself like our native plant, and tends to be a little bit shorter stature like our native plant, and if it's in water, it'll have a shiny stem like our native plant. But once it's established, there's no confusion. It's a high density Frag.

Actually, if you drive down any of your major highways or that, that's probably all invasive Frag that you're seeing this time of year, that standing straw colored plant with a feather sheen head.

[Stuart Carlton]
The little attractive highways and byways. No, but all right, but you bring up a good point, and we can kind of close on this, which is, so we are in the beginning of the growing season, allegedly. It's spring break, and it's 16 degrees out, I would point out.

We are allegedly in the beginning of the growing season coming up. Are there individual actions that our listeners can take to sort of look through, you know, either identify and help deal with Phragmites, or what are things that people can do on an individual basis?

[Janice Gilbert]
Yeah, excellent question. In the wintertime on ice, like when it's safe to be out there, there's a lot of volunteers that are out scraping the stalks off the ice and bagging it and burning it. And sometimes they'll snip the seed head into paper bags, and so they work in pairs of two.

One holds the bag open, the other one snips the head. This is for smaller Phragmites cells in local communities or cottage areas, whatever. This time of year, I wouldn't recommend, if there's no ice or that, it's best not to be walking through because you're going to be disturbing fish spawning this time of year, and some other impacts, of course.

So we typically don't have, we recommend folks don't even venture out into wetlands or these aquatic areas until mid of July, and then be very careful if you're walking through, and look for nesting birds and that. But this time of year, they could be mapping it, so they could be, you know, get their phone and say, hey, it's here, and report it to a local Phragmites group. If they go on the Great Lakes Phragmites Collaborative, they'll get a link to groups in their region that are working on Phragmites, so maybe they can link in there.

They can get a community group established, which this is how it happened. Grassroots in Ontario went to their municipal council and said, we have a problem here, and they got funding, and they got a program together, a management plan, and got the community educated and involved. So, and again, I mentioned before, I think the grassroots engagement is long-term how it's going to work, be successful.

[Stuart Carlton]
Well, that's fascinating. It's interesting to hear about the work you're doing and how you got involved, and actually just about aquatic plants in general and all of that. That's been super interesting to hear about, Janice.

But that's actually not why we invited you on Teach Me About the Great Lakes this week. The reason we invited you on Teach Me About the Great Lakes is to ask you two questions. The first one is this.

If you could have a great donut for breakfast or a great sandwich for lunch, which would you choose?

[Janice Gilbert]
Well, your questions before this were awesome. This one, I'm going to choose a tomato sandwich in the summer, fresh off the vine, still warm from the sun.

[Stuart Carlton]
Oh, man.

[Janice Gilbert]
Yeah. And homemade bread, you know, that soft bread, and a little bit of mayo, and a little bit of pepper, nothing tastes better than that.

[Stuart Carlton]
Boom, boom, boom, those fresh tomatoes. I cannot wait. Yeah, I'm not a gardener.

I have a black thumb, but I try to grow tomatoes every year just for that, because even at the farmer's market, they're fine. They're good at the farmer's. At the grocery store, they're serviceable.

The farmer's market, you can get pretty good ones, but that one that you pick fresh in the morning, and then you slice it up, yeah, it's wonderful. It's going to last you all day. It's worth combating.

It might not be worth combating the rabbits for in my neighborhood, but it's worth thinking about, and then getting mad at the rabbits every single year. Yeah, that's excellent. Now it's going to be pausing so you can ask the second question.

[Natty Morrison]
Sorry, my bad. All right, second question. What is a special place in the Great Lakes that you'd like to share with our audience?

What makes it special?

[Janice Gilbert]
So my really special place, I'm not going to share because I don't want people going. That's what makes it special. It's very, very, not very nice to me at all.

[Stuart Carlton]
No, that's wonderful. I don't agree. I think it's wonderful.

[Janice Gilbert]
But the one I will share with you is not too far from where I live. It's called Longpoint area. It's a large sand spit that goes out into Lake Erie, and on the one side of the sand spit is endless sand.

You could walk forever, and there's these huge sand dunes in back and behind. Lots of really cool plants and animals. On the least side, it's a huge embayment.

It's shallow. It's like this massive wetland, and tens of thousands of waterfowl come through the tundra swans. This time of year, it's just bubbling with wildlife, all the birds coming through.

It's so cool. But then a lot of the passerines fly through this area, too. The sky can be black down there in the evening with the songbirds during the migration period, and then a lot of very rare turtles and whatnot.

It's a really cool place. A lot of birders go there. Yeah, it's a pretty neat place.

[Natty Morrison]
That sounds incredible. Great answer.

[Stuart Carlton]
Yeah, well, thank you so much. Janice Gilbert, the founder and executive director of the Invasive Phragmites Control Center up there in Ontario. Sorry, I'm looking at pictures of Longpoint, so I'm distracted.

Let me close that browser. Anyway, Janice, thank you so much for coming on and teaching us all about the Great Lakes.

[Janice Gilbert]
Well, thank you so much, Stuart and Natty. I really appreciate helping to get this word out, get more people educated and aware about invasive phragmites. It's a significant issue in the Great Lakes, for sure.

[Natty Morrison]
Yeah, thanks so much. We love having you on.

[Stuart Carlton]
Man, phragmites. All these invasives are a problem. But as you pointed out, whenever we talk to an invasive plant person, herbicides have got to be part of the solution if there's going to be one.

[Natty Morrison]
Yeah.

[Stuart Carlton]
Yeah. I think it's just trade-offs.

I think it's just trade-offs. Herbicides are what I need in my stinking garden. Like, we do this stupid organic stuff.

Oh, my God. And so it's nothing but weeds and rabbits, and not the fun kind of either. Yeah.

You a big garden guy?

[Natty Morrison]
I respect it. No, yes, I do. My fiancée is the one with the green thumb.

We've got a spice garden. She grows tons of plants outside. Our plants are currently being kept alive in our home.

[Stuart Carlton]
Oh, you have like a rotation in and out.

[Natty Morrison]
Oh, big time. Yeah.

So actually, let me ask you this. Does gardening mean for food? Or does that also mean...

[Stuart Carlton]
No, I think it means anything.

[Natty Morrison]
Yeah. Okay, great. Yeah.

We've got a bunch of... She's got an aloe plant that's like 30 years old or something like that. It's just absolutely enormous.

She's got monstera plants. She's got all sorts of different hanging vines and beautiful green things. And then she also...

We try to grow some tomatoes and some... What do you call it? Strawberries.

Those eggplants. It's a lot of me standing from a distance. I water them every day.

I'm very good at watering them.

[Stuart Carlton]
You're a watering machine.

[Natty Morrison]
I'm a watering machine. Call me a host, because I'm a watering machine. But is that bad?

[Stuart Carlton]
No, that's fine.

[Natty Morrison]
I'm very impressed by gardening, and I would love to do more of it.

[Stuart Carlton]
Yeah. Excellent. Okay.

Well, Natty, as you know, because we always remember, we like to end this with our, what did we learn today? So tell me one thing you learned about the Great Lakes today.

[Natty Morrison]
Yeah. I mean, I learned a lot about the impact that invasive species and also just aquatic plant species have on the environment and the ecosystem. You think of invasive species, I think generally more of like species of animals.

And so it's interesting to think about what impact they can have and just how dang dense that stuff gets. It's nuts.

[Stuart Carlton]
I know. And it's everywhere too. I had no idea, because again, I thought it was like, oh, look at the lovely seals, just like we have at home. And then I learned about...

Well, actually, I'd learned about Phragmites forever, and it wasn't even that long ago that I found out that thing was Phragmites. And I was like, oh, foiled.

[Natty Morrison]
Yeah. Yeah. And that's the other part too, is how similar it looks, how tricky it must be to have it look almost identical to the non-invasive version.

[Stuart Carlton]
At least at young stages. I think, yeah, we didn't...

[Natty Morrison]
It's kind of the black sheep, the black sheep of the family for that. So what about you? What did you learn?

[Stuart Carlton]
Well, I learned that there was a native Phragmites, which I had no idea, and apparently a water-safe Roundup or Glyphosate. So that was all interesting to me. So learning new things today, that is for sure.

[Natty Morrison]
Wonderful.

[Stuart Carlton]
That's the goal. Excellent.

[Natty Morrison]
Teach Me About the Great Lakes is brought to you by the fine people at Illinois Indiana Sea Grant. We'd encourage you to check out the cool stuff we do at iicgrant.org and at ilincgrant on Facebook, Blue Sky, YouTube, and other social media.

[Stuart Carlton]
Man, such enunciation. You're a pro, Natty Morrison. Thank you.

Yeah. Our senior producer is Carolyn Foley. And Teach Me About the Great Lakes is produced by Megan the Lake Lover Gun, Rene Miles, and Natty the Hose Morrison.

Ethan Chitty is our associate producer and fixer. And our coordinating producer is Ava Hale. Our super fun podcast artwork is by Joel Davenport.

And the show is edited sometimes with a grimace by Sandra Sobota.

[Natty Morrison]
If you have a question or comment about the show, please email it to teachmeaboutthegreatlakes at gmail.com or leave a message on our hotline at 765-496-IISG. That's 765-496-4474. Or if you want, send us a postcard.

We love postcards.

[Stuart Carlton]
We do love postcards. Thanks for listening. Keep grating those lakes.

[Natty Morrison]
Keep grating those lakes.

[Stuart Carlton]
Keep grating. Keep grating those lakes. There we go.