Adaptive Management Committee

The Adaptive Management Committee was established along with the revised Lake Management Plan which was adopted in 2004. The committee is comprised of two Lake Puckaway District Commissioners, two DNR staff, and three Lake District members.

The committee may call upon other experts as needed for assistance. They serve at the pleasure of the District Chairman and can be appointed or replaced at the time of the Annual Meeting each year.

The AMC’s charge is to summarize and evaluate data from past and present monitoring of water quality, water levels, aquatic vegetation, carp and fish populations. The committee will monitor the health of the lake, set up a baseline for the lakes condition and recommend specific targets for the lakes health based on science, not emotions, and make recommendations to the Board of Commissioners who will present them to the membership at the District’s annual meeting for approval. .

This years AMC consists of Roger Swanke, Brian Zimmerman, Derek Kavanaugh, Mark Sesing, Paul Gettelman and Randy Schmidt. The committee meets once a month and here are some of the things we have been doing this past year and plan on doing in the coming months.

The AMC has been reviewing historical data from the Environmental Integrity of Lake Puckaway and the Green Lake Land Conservation Department data and we have estimated the emergent vegetation has decreased about 75% over the last 60 years. The AMC believes this trend can be reversed. We have recommended to the Commissioners that the District adopt an emergent plant restoration goal of a 300 acre increase by the year 2018.

The AMC had their annual Lake Tour last fall after the water went down following the flood. The Commissioners, staff from the DNR and Derek Kavanaugh from Green Lake Land Conservation Department were in attendance. We noticed how sickly the emergent vegetation looked and how eroded our shorelines have become after this high water event.

After reviewing lake history, the Environmental Integrity of Lake Puckaway report, Derek’s aerial photos of the emergent vegetation loss over the years and our annual boat tours,

it has become apparent to us on the AMC that this trend is not reversing itself. We have recommended to the District Board that we leave the boards off the Princeton Dam for an extra 4 weeks for 3 of 5 years to help the emergent vegetation. We feel this will help restore some of the emergent vegetation loss we have been experiencing and contribute to goal 1, goal 3, and goal 5 of our Lake Management Plan. This is an attempt to protect Lake Puckaway for our children and future generations.

We also installed 3 water level gauges last fall. One on the Princeton locks, one at the Log Cabin Channel, and the last on the Fox River on the west end of the lake by Fish Camp. This summer, with help from Green Lake Land Conservation Department, we will tie each elevation marker to USGS coordinates and the gauges will be absolute elevations.

We will again attempt, weather permitting, to construct carp enclosures this spring in sensitive areas to monitor vegetation growth to see the affect of carp and boat traffic. This project will be funded by the Improvement Association.

Randy Schmidt