- [Narrator] Coming up on "Great Lakes Now," fighting invasive phragmites on the Lake Huron shoreline.

- People say it's a really pretty grass, but if you have to spend any amount of time in phragmites, it becomes pretty difficult, ugly, hard plant to navigate.

- [Narrator] Mapping the lake bottom and the things that live there.

- It really starts with technology, sonar.

So using acoustics from vessels or autonomous vehicles.

- [Narrator] And is the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative in trouble?

- [Announcer] This program was brought to you by the Fred and Barbara Erb Family Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation,, Richard C Devereux Foundation for Energy and Environmental Programs at Detroit PBS, Polk Family Fund, DTE Foundation, and contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

- Hi, I'm Anna Sysling.

Welcome to "Great Lakes Now."

There are over 180 known non-native species in the Great Lakes, invasive mussels, carp, and lamprey get a lot of attention, but some of the most vexing invaders are plants.

Our friends at TVO bring us the story from Ontario's Lake Huron Shoreline.

- [Narrator] Invasive phragmites considered one of Ontario's worst invasive species.

Unlike their native counterpart, they're aggressive, spreading quickly and densely as many as 200 stems per square meter, reaching heights of up to five meters or 15 feet, this perennial grass has been choking out wetlands across the province for decades.

We are in Kettle and Stony Point First Nation.

The shorelines here look more like a scene out of John Houston's 1951 film, "The African Queen" than a community in southwestern Ontario.

- Can't tell it from the water, the water from the land for that matter.

- [Narrator] We're meeting up with wetland ecologist, Janice Gilbert.

She's one of the driving forces behind invasive phragmites management in Ontario.

Gilbert is the executive director of the invasive phragmites control center and has dedicated the past two decades to researching, monitoring and ridding wetland habitats of this invasive plant.

- You see this tall feather plant in the roadside ditches that's phragmites.

A lot of communities now where if there's been a lot of construction around stormwater ponds in urban areas, on the shorelines of lakes like where we are here, it's pretty prevalent in southern Ontario.

- [Narrator] Gilbert and her team are focusing on an infested section of the Lake Huron shoreline.

She and her crew use an amphibious vehicle to navigate the shallow but rocky waters, it's hard work under the blistering summer sun, but the biggest challenge seems to be trying to find her team amongst the thick walls of phragmites.

- That's so weird.

I should be able to see them.

Okay, we're going.

- [Narrator] Today, the team is spraying a herbicide designed for wetland use.

The herbicide called Habitat Aqua is diluted with water to create a 3% solution.

This herbicide was approved by Health Canada in 2021 and is one of many strategies used to kill these invasive plants in Ontario.

- So basically you start out on the far edge and you do a line and then you can spray five meters on either side, and then you offset you, so your next transect coming back parallel along that squiggly line.

You know, you're careful as possible spraying around the phragmites, so you're not targeting the native plants.

There's collateral damage.

Absolutely.

But the thing is, we, we do know the native plants recover.

Yeah, once you get rid of the phragmites it's amazing the response.

There's a lot a good seed bank and the native plants, just like they've been released.

- [Narrator] After a few months, the dead and dry stalks are then removed through a controlled burn or by hand and scheduled when birds or other wildlife are not nesting.

Another technique that Janice and her team frequently use with great success is the cut to drown method.

- Basically, you cut all the stalks, then the plant has to get a shoot up through the water column, break the surface to get the oxygen flowing again, and that replenishes the oxygen supply.

If that plant can't get up and break the water surface, then the plants drown.

That's how it works.

And so the deeper the water, the better.

Of course, - [Narrator] The invasive grass is known as the European common reed, but generally referred to as phragmites or frag.

It was spawned along Canada's eastern seaboard in the 1800s and has crept its way up the St. Lawrence and through the Great Lakes.

- I have heard a lot of people say it's really pretty grass, and I guess I could see that if I didn't know how destructive it was.

But if you have to spend any amount of time in phragmites, it quickly does not become pretty.

It becomes pretty difficult, ugly, hard plant to navigate.

- [Narrator] These towering plants are known to release toxins from its roots into the soil, impeding the growth of native plants.

It's also been disastrous for local wildlife.

- We know that it's really hard on turtles.

We found dead turtles in high density phragmites, they crawl in and they can't find their way out, and they run outta food source and energy, and eventually they die in there.

For birds again, they use the edge of the phragmites for structure.

But once you get into the interior of these large dense cells, there's minimal habitat value for a lot of the wildlife.

- [Narrator] A quick trip around the vegetation, and it's quite clear how much of a stranglehold the phragmites has on the wildlife here.

This is a dead zone.

Birds are far and few between, no buzzing or chirping from insects, just a wall of deafening silence.

And what we see above ground is only half the story.

Once established, phragmites's roots can spread deep into the ground.

- So this is a, what's called a rhizome and what would be all below the ground, all underneath the thick phragmites and it's thick, thick, tight, tight, tight, going down several meters till it hits bedrock and it can't go any further.

And you can see the diameter of it, how much oxygen it can hold.

You see the roots coming off of it.

- [Narrator] Invasive phragmites have touched virtually every community in Ontario, and it's particularly bad for communities along the Great Lakes.

- It's just kind of overtaken the waterways.

10 years ago, it was still not as bad as it is.

It it was, we were able to see the water, access the water.

Now you have to go through the phragmites to get to get there, and you don't see the beauty of the lake - [Narrator] Not only have phragmites blocked to their views, but it's made some access points nearly impassable.

- The fishermen, they go out regularly.

They provide meals for their family, meals for the community.

Some of them provide fish to the elders, people from all over come, and purchase fish from our fishermen here.

So some of them, it's a way to sustain their life.

- It goes back to our heritage and our culture.

We are hunters and fishers, we gather, and one of the, it's our lifestyle.

And when you see this plant taking over, it takes over our lifestyle.

And of course, we're not able to to participate in the things that we enjoy and that have been a part of our culture for many years.

- [Narrator] Dana Lyn Williams is a member of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation and the founder of First Nation phragmites control.

- Well it is devastating.

It's, it's taking over, it's dense.

It's unlike anything that you'll experience walking through it or even an animal having to go through it is just unbelievable.

- [Narrator] Williams is working alongside Gilbert to help educate First Nations communities about how to control phragmites.

Williams and Gilbert have set up demonstration sites on three First Nations communities, Kettle and Stony Point First Nation, Aamjiwnaang First Nation, and Walpole Island First Nation.

- This particular area that we're doing now we'll either come in and cut down or burn because you'll see the plants by probably February, March.

We'll see that it's dead, hopefully as they see what has taken place, and it goes back to the government and financing, if they'll help and kick in and assist us to do more work on the territory to get a lot of this territory looked after.

- [Narrator] Earlier this year, Ontario announced plans to spend $16 million over the next three years fighting invasive species, much of that money is being spent on a province-wide strategy to fend off phragmites.

- We're heading towards Wood Drive, coastal meadow marsh along the Lake Huron shoreline.

That is the only area on the Lake Huron shoreline adjacent to a Carolinian forest.

So it's a very, very special environment.

- [Narrator] Nancy Vidler knows all too well the importance of having a well coordinated plan when it comes to phragmites control.

She and a team of dedicated residents in Lampton shores have been waging a war with phragmites since 2009 when the Lampton Shores Phragmites Community group was formed, thanks to early intervention, they eliminated phragmites from a beach in her community of Port Franks and then to surrounding areas.

- Oh my gosh, wonderful.

Jan, this is great.

I remember vividly one day coming out here and the phragmites was so high and so dense.

It was, it was nearly impossible to walk, to walk through it and yeah, this is just amazing.

- [Narrator] The biggest success story is this wetland, just a stones throw away from the phragmites dead zone we saw in Kettle and Stony Point First Nation, native plants have returned recreating habitats for migratory birds, turtles, and other wildlife.

- Our whole rationale was we live in an area where recreation and tourism and agriculture are so important, and if this had been left untreated, all three of those things would've been greatly impacted.

So then we thought, okay, we've got it under control in Port Franks, but what's happening up the river?

We looked and, and the surrounding areas because as long as it was there, then we would continue to have a problem.

- [Narrator] Reclaiming local wetlands is an ongoing labor of love for Vidler's Group.

They started this restoration project in 2014 with help from Gilbert's team, conservation authorities, all levels of government, civic and corporate donations, plus an army of volunteers who put in well over 10,000 hours.

When they first started a decade ago, herbicide use on wetlands was not an available option, which meant removing the phragmites required getting right in the water and cutting the invasive plant by hand.

Experts like Gilbert know there's no silver bullet that would eradicate invasive phragmites, but is hopeful that over time, with the help of a province wide effort and continued support from community members like Williams and Vidler, Ontario's wetlands will breathe again.

- The plant doesn't move, so we can, we have ways of controlling it.

And you mentioned that we've been dealing doing this for a number of years and we have, but it's just been piecemeal work with just a few small groups.

I'm so excited now, there's a provincial program being rolled out.

There's provincial strategy, there's funding because without consistent funding and without a a good game plan and a lot of community input, we're not gonna win the battle, but we are winning it.

Where we have that in place, we have lots of success stories and so that gives us a lot of hope.

(peaceful music) (upbeat electronic music) - All over our region, researchers are working to gain a better understanding of the great lakes from the wildlife that calls the lakes home to our impact on the lakes themselves.

Last fall, I visited the Great Lakes Research Center at Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Michigan, where Hayden Henderson showed me some of the interesting technology he's been using to map the lake beds and the things that live there.

- A function at the interface of ecosystems and technology, and really for me, that stems from the rate of change we're seeing in the Great Lakes and climates in general require the intervention of technology so that we can do things fast enough to understand them.

- [Narrator] Like Hayden said, the lakes are changing fast and it's important to understand how those changes affect everything from wildlife to fishing to shipping.

That's why Hayden and others at the Great Lakes Research Center are working with the US Geological Survey and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to do benthic habitat mapping, documenting and classifying the organisms and geology of the lake bottom.

The goal is to create a new map that's less about navigation and more about providing detailed data to fishery managers, hatchery managers, and those tracking the spread of invasive species.

Why is it so important to understand what's happening at the bottom of our lakes?

- I think you could think about a traditional navigation chart that would be your bathymetric map, and if you've looked at one closely, there are generally subsections or, or markings of rocky or sandy very randomly and not in detail throughout the map.

What we're trying to do is, is flip that script so that those maps indicate a very fine resolution detail of the lake bottom that may not be important to to, to the navigation, but that is critically important to ecosystem managers as they think about what habitat exists below, below the surface of the water.

- [Anna] Maybe you've heard that we've studied outer space more than our own oceans.

Well, we've studied our oceans more than we've studied the Great Lakes.

If your job is to make sure we have healthy and productive fisheries or monitor water quality, then that's a problem.

The maps Hayden's helping to create aim to show us the information that we need to make smarter about our resources.

- It it really starts with with technology, sonar.

So using acoustics from vessels or autonomous vehicles, from that data, we can then derive all the interesting feature sets and in anomalies in the lake bottom.

- [Anna] Some data comes from the Iver3 autonomous vehicle, which sends acoustic waves left and right as it moves forward.

The result is a sonar image that provides the researchers with a view of the lake bed and its features.

Sonar is used for a variety of purposes by researchers throughout the Great Lakes.

- The Wisconsin shipwreck coast in Lake Michigan had their whole sanctuary imaged with sonar, and so all of those wrecks hundreds are in sonified or sonar images of those features, and so we're able to go investigate them and everything in between.

- Shipwrecks are fascinating attractions for divers and historians, but managers and researchers are often interested in environmental threats, toxic substances or invasive species.

For this benthic habitat mapping project, Hayden uses sonar to capture the lake bed shape and identify any formations that they'd wanna investigate further.

Once the sonar images are analyzed, they'll get a closer look at interesting features, often with a remotely operated vehicle or ROV, it's like an underwater drone with optical cameras so the researchers can capture images and video of the lake bottom and the organisms that live there.

- So here we have a remotely operated vehicle with a the umbilical or the tether it's called, and we have our video feed live right here.

The newer versions of these even use an Xbox controller.

And that's just cool and fun.

And we have interns from the university that are able to step in and, you know, maybe they're not playing Xbox anymore, they're driving a research vehicle.

One of the beauties of creating these maps is that they're not only useful today, but in 10 years, or 20 years when we have a new invasive species introduction or you know, maybe we have a waning of a existing invasive species and we need to know what that's now gonna mean to this ecosystem, this food web that's been modified over time.

- [Anna] The data and images that the researchers collect live in a map that gives users a glimpse into what's happening at the bottom of the lakes.

- So this is the coastal ocean science and this is their bio mapper.

So this is one of the eventual products of this work where you'll be able to access this URL.

So you could come in if you were a fisheries researcher or otherwise, and see that that image from that exact spatial location - With a lot of detail.

- With a lot of detail throughout, you know, this is 60, 60 nautical miles of coastline.

- [Anna] This ongoing project is a massive undertaking and Hayden is quick to point out that the GLRC is far from the only team participating in the research.

- We have partners all over the Great Lakes in the country that are contributing to this.

We have folks in DC doing artificial intelligence with this data to further our ability to use the observations across the map space.

- So not only is this work collaborative, but really some of the work that is happening around mapping these lake beds here in the Great Lakes region, it's actually really informative and meaningful in a national scope.

- Absolutely, and none of this happens without everyone chipping in and we're not all experts in each other's respective fields.

And that's the fun part.

That's kind of what it takes to make all this work.

(upbeat music) - We've been cleaning up the Great Lakes for more than half a century now, and the improvements have been significant, but the possibility of federal funding cuts to US environmental programs has some worried about continued progress.

- [Narrator] The Great Lakes are the largest system of fresh surface water in the world and a source of drinking water for about 40 million people.

But industrial pollution, agriculture runoff, and invasive species have caused big problems.

The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative or GLRI is one response to those problems and it's had strong bipartisan support from the beginning.

- My name's Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco.

- My name is Izzy Ross.

I am a climate solutions reporter at Interlock and Public Radio and with Grist - [Narrator] Izzy Ross and Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco Report on climate for Interlock And Public Radio, WBEZ Chicago and Grist.

They recently teamed up to cover concerns about the GLARI's future.

- Oftentimes when you're reporting on legislation, there are people who are very against it and people who are very for it.

And with this, it was a lot of people concerned about what could happen with federal funding for it, but not many people who were adamantly opposed to it.

- [Narrator] President George W. Bush laid the foundations when he signed executive order 13340.

- President Bush signed an executive order that told states, tribes and federal agencies to come together to collaborate on ways to figure out how they could coordinate cleanup efforts across the region.

- [Narrator] The executive order established the Great Lakes Interagency Task Force, which drew up a multi-billion dollar plan for restoring the Great Lakes.

- Fast forward to President Barack Obama in 2010, CLRI.

the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative passes, and that's what we've had for about 15 years at this point.

- [Narrator] GLRI has helped to fund thousands of projects fighting invasive species, improving water quality, and cleaning up toxic substances throughout the Great Lakes.

Please raise your right hand and repeat after me.

I, Donald John Trump.

Do solemnly swear.

- I Donald John Trump do solemnly swear.

- [Narrator] But during his first term in office, President Trump proposed budgets three years in a row that drastically reduced funding for the GLRI or eliminated it altogether.

Each time Congress rejected those cuts.

- When President Trump tried to cut funding from the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative in his first term in office, we did see an outcry from Great Lakes lawmakers who did not want to see that funding get cut.

- Then in 2019, Trump reversed course at a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

- I support the Great Lakes.

Always have.

They're beautiful.

They're big.

Very deep, record deepness, right?

And I'm going to get, in honor of my friends, full funding of $300 million for the Great Lakes Restoration in- - [Narrator] Congressman Bill Huizenga was one of several Michigan Republicans who pushed Trump to support the GLRI before the rally.

He made an economic case for the initiative as he had before Congress a few months earlier.

- The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative has a strong track record of success, specifically in West Michigan where the work to clean up toxic hotspot in areas like Muskegon is estimated to have increased property values by nearly $12 million and generated $1 million in new recreational spending.

- In terms of return on investment of what comes from this actual spending.

One economic analysis found that for every dollar invested in the program, the region sees about $3 return in economic benefits.

- [Narrator] Vice President JD Vance has also supported the GLRI, in fact, as an Ohio Senator, he was part of a bipartisan coalition pushing to increase funding for it, and he spoke in favor of the GLRI during the 2024 campaign.

In a May, 2024 press release from his Senate office, he said the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative delivers the tools we need to fight invasive species, algal blooms, pollution, and other threats to the ecosystem.

This is a common sense bipartisan effort that I encourage all of my colleagues to support.

- He was quite vocal about it on the campaign trail when he came to Traverse City, he talked about President Trump's support of environmental initiatives, including support for the Great Lakes and environmental programs here.

- President Trump signed the Great American Outdoors Act to rebuild our national parks, spent $900 million rebuilding our national parks, and he signed another piece of legislation that put $175 million into Great Lakes Restoration, which of course benefits all of us.

- [Narrator] But in the opening weeks of his second term, Trump has moved to cut environmental spending and the EPA, which oversees the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.

Could the GLRI be in Trump's crosshairs too?

As Izzy and Juanpablo's reporting points out, some are hoping that Vice President Vance will convince Trump to leave the initiative intact, but that's far from certain.

- During the campaign, he did throw a lot of doubt on whether climate change was human caused and he's followed Trump's messaging on fossil fuels.

We don't know exactly where Vice President Vance stands today.

It's anybody's guess.

- [Narrator] And the initiative's history of bipartisan support is no guarantee the initiative's funding won't be cut or eliminated.

- The House bill to reauthorize this funding and increase it to $500 million a year was introduced in January.

The Senate bill for that was introduced in February.

Now we are waiting on Congress to act.

(upbeat music) - Thanks for watching.

For more about any of the stories in this show, visit GreatLakesNow.Org.

When you get there, you can follow us on social media or subscribe to our newsletter to get updates about our work.

See you out on the lakes.

(bouncy music) (bouncy music continues) - [Narrator] This program was brought to you by the Fred and Barbara Erb Family Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.

Richard C Devereux Foundation for Energy and Environmental Programs at Detroit PBS, Polk Family Fund, DTE Foundation, and contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

(peaceful music)