Jungle Terrace volunteers are making a difference

Excerpted from the Florida Lake Management Society Summer 2023 Newsletter:

Jungle Lake is a 10 acre lake with 1.5 mile shoreline due to fingers and islands. The lake, whose water makes its way to Boca Ciega Bay, is located in the St. Pete area of Pinellas County. Water lettuce has been a nemesis of the lake for decades. It has totally overgrown the lake 7 times in recent memory. Spraying about every six weeks is an important practice here, each treatment gets 98% of the lettuce which sinks to bottom . . . and leaves 2% as seedlings continuing to grow, leaving Jungle Lake with about 2 feet of muck.

Members of the Jungle Terrace Civic Association take their lake’s care seriously. Their goal is to minimize or eliminate need to spray the invasives. “Volunteers accomplished 4x what I hoped for”, says Dr. Ed Carlson. Community members "weeded" of Water Lettuce the entire length of the ditch, and all the way along both sides of the south water finger past the Swim Pool to the Park Staff shed. They removed adult plants with many attached… to single baby plants. The group also planted 10 test plots and floating wetland islands on May 6. They plan to continue their vigilance with hand-removal until all seedlings are GONE!