If you’ve gone boating on one of Wisconsin’s lakes this summer, chances are that you’ve met a volunteer reminding you to clean your boat to help keep the lake healthy.
The Clean Boats, Clean Waters program trains volunteers to perform boat checks and educate people about preventing the spread of aquatic invasive species.
Since 2004, inspectors have checked over two million boats across Wisconsin and connected with countless people about the importance of cleaning, draining and drying their watercraft.
It’s become one of the most successful boat inspection programs in the country, and it all started as a middle school science project in northern Wisconsin.
Introduced is a podcast from Wisconsin Sea Grant that highlights stories about the Great Lakes and aquatic invasive species science. The podcast recently uncovered the story of the Clean Boats, Clean Waters program in its season three finale.
To learn more, Lake Effect’s Xcaret Nuñez spoke with Bonnie Willison, the video and podcast producer at Wisconsin Sea Grant, and Maree Stewart, one of the original middle schoolers who started the boat inspection program.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Can you tell me about the unique backstory of the Clean Boats, Clean Waters program?
Bonnie Willison: So we were trying to think of ideas for season three of the podcast, and Clean Boats, Clean Waters is a pretty well-known program throughout the state. If you’ve gone boating, you might have seen people in blue shirts out at the boat launches who talk to boaters about invasive species. So I knew about the program, but one of my colleagues said, “Hey, I heard this program was started by middle schoolers in northern Wisconsin,” and I was like, “What?” I Googled it, and there wasn’t much out there about this story. So we wanted to get to the bottom of it.
So I was able to connect with Maree, who started the program back in middle school, and for the other folks [I spoke with], I knew I wanted to talk to one of the teachers involved… and talk to more people who were at the [Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources] back then to see how this program went from a one year school project to now a 20 year running state funded program.
So I did my internet sleuthing. I called people and tried to find contact information. Maree was a big help in connecting me to some people. So, yeah, it was a challenge, because… this story takes place around 2003, 2004, and a lot of people have been retired from the DNR and from [University of Wisconsin-Extension] for like 20 years. So I was really glad to be able to talk to them and record this story for the first time for some of these people.
Maree, how did you even get the idea to look into aquatic invasive species prevention when you were only 12 years old?
Maree Stewart: So the competition, which was put on by Bayer and the National Science Foundation at the time, we had an opportunity as seventh and eighth grade students to form teams and come up with a challenge or problem that was facing our community, and a solution for that problem, which was supposed to be somewhat science based.
So myself and the two other students, one in seventh grade along with me, and the other was an eighth grader, we just thought about where we lived and what would be a unique issue to tackle. And like I said in the podcast, we knew that we weren't going to be solving world hunger or world peace with this, but something that really directly affected our community. Minocqua is a big tourist area, and lake recreation is probably the largest part of that. So we thought that would be a good angle and something to differentiate us [from the other student projects], as something to do with the lakes and natural resources around us.
My mom was also a big help, she was also my seventh-grade science teacher and other people's seventh-grade science teacher. But the teacher who was interviewed on the podcast, Lisa Ahlers, she was the gifted and talented teacher, so she was the one who pursued doing this competition for students who were interested. And I think originally, we were looking at focusing on Zebra mussels. And as we looked into it more, we found that Eurasian watermilfoil was more prevalent and more of an issue in the community at that time, and so that's how we landed on that as our project.
How big of an issue were aquatic invasive species during the early 2000s in Wisconsin?
Willison: They're not new. Since colonization, people have been purposely or accidentally bringing in these invasive species. Now, when you go to lakes, at every single boat landing, there's a sign about cleaning, draining and drying your boat, educating people about aquatic invasive species. You'll also probably see Clean Boats, Clean Waters inspectors. Wisconsin is really at the forefront in leading the nation for aquatic invasive species like education management. That's now, but back in the early 2000s it was a really different story.
People were just starting to become aware of aquatic invasive species, and the state really had no budget for it, so there were no signs at boat landings. There were really no education efforts going on. So in the early 2000s, there were zebra mussels starting to move in from the Great Lakes. There was more Eurasian watermilfoil kind of being spread from the southern part of the state, where there's more people, up to the North Woods, where people have cabins. So the problem at that time was “How do we get all of this information out to people?”
[Aquatic invasive species] were understudied too. Now we've done decades worth of research on Eurasian watermilfoil, and we know that when it gets into lakes, sometimes it really does take off, sometimes the lake kind of evens out and it doesn't really become a problem. But back then, we didn't really have that science, and so a lot of people were alarmed, I think, about the spread of aquatic invasive species from my research.
Maree, did you think this program would be where it is today?
Stewart: Absolutely not. I never would have imagined that it would take off like it has. I am just really proud of it. I work in the nonprofit space now, and I think that's really because of this project and seeing what a difference people can make, even from a young age. So it's been really impactful for me personally, and just to see again, how many people have made it their own and become really passionate about it is really inspiring. I care very deeply about conservation and about our lakes, and I really feel like this is something that's going to endure for a long time, and it feels great to have been a part of. That was a little bit of luck, you know. I think we had a great idea, but not all great ideas become what this has become. So I'm just so glad that it did.
I have to say, too, it's a great legacy. I know this was mentioned in the notes of the podcast, but like I said, there were two other students who did the project with me, and Luke, who was in the same grade as I was, he passed away due to suicide a few years ago. I get a little emotional. He was a really brilliant person, and he was so proud of this as well. I remember when we won the award and all the confetti came down. he's like, “I felt like Michael Jordan,” and so, it's wonderful that [the Clean Boats, Clean Waters program] has become what it is for a lot of reasons. But another really cool personal thing is that it's a great legacy for [Luke] as well.
You can visit Wisconsin Sea Grant’s website to learn more about the Introduced podcast and listen to its most recent episode on the Clean Boats, Clean Waters program.
You can also learn more about Clean Boats, Clean Waters by visiting the Wisconsin DNR or UW-Wisconsin Extension websites.
