Aquatic Invasive Species - Easy way to eliminate "Weed Police"

[Pete Stoltman]

In reference to the previous post about the proposed launch fees at Big St. Germain I have a solution to at least part of the problem. If implemented this could virtually eliminate the need for having boat monitors (aka Weed Police) either paid or volunteers at the boat launches. In the state of Wisconsin it is illegal to transport aquatic weeds. If any of you have done boating in Minnesota you may already be aware of this. Minnesota takes this seriously and if I remember right you can be fined a couple hundred bucks for a violation. If a cop sees you transporting weeds on your boat or trailer, you get pulled over and a nice fat juicy ticket. At present it seems the police in Wisconsin have chosen not to enforce this law. My suggestion is that if the police (state/county?) started pulling over people with weeds on their rigs and gave them a ticket with a significant fine attached to it word would get out pretty fast that you need to check your rig before traveling down the road. We all should be doing this anyway and many people do. I suspect that it wouldn't take long at all before people got the word that spreading AIS is going to put a crunch in your wallet and the job of policing people at boat launches would soon be unnecessary.

Just sayin.

[Muskie Matt]

Well said...