PORT HENRY -- Officials responsible for controlling parasitic sea lampreys in Lake Champlain are looking to expand their treatment area.

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, working with aquatic biologists from New York and Vermont, want to expand the long-term lamprey-control program to include tributaries with newly found sea-lamprey larvae.

Mill Brook, which flows into Lake Champlain at Port Henry, and the Lamoille River in Milton, Vt., have been targeted as prime locations for lampricide treatment.

ENVIRONMENT CHANGE

"There is a significant population there," Department of Environmental Conservation Biologist Lance Durfey said of Mill Brook. "It's been used by spawning lamprey for years and years, but the habitat was never conducive to establishing a larval population."

Adult lampreys need to spawn in tributaries with a rocky bottom, laying eggs in nests they build with pebbles. However, once the larvae are hatched, they must burrow into the sediment, where they live for up to four years.

"We're not really sure why the habitat has improved for larvae," Durfey said, noting that recent flooding in the area might be one factor that has changed the stream's environment.

Biologists survey tributaries like Mill Brook and the Lamoille River yearly in search of new spawning populations. Those efforts panned out last year when they uncovered an estimated 13,000 larvae in Mill Brook.

NEW PLAN

The two tributaries are not part of the original Environmental Assessment Plan that allows biologists to treat several streams and rivers, such as the Chazy and Saranac, on a rotating annual basis.

The Lake Champlain Fish and Wildlife Management Cooperative, including representatives from the Fish & Wildlife Service, New York DEC and the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife, has drafted a new assessment for expanding the treatment area.

"Part of the process involves proposing several options for expanding the program to the public," said Bradley Young of the Fish & Wildlife Service in Essex Junction, Vt.

"We'll describe what our favored alternative is and then move forward, unless there is fairly strong public support for something else."

Other options have included creating barrier dams or simply doing nothing. But the treatment site at Mill Brook is less than a mile and would be relatively simple to conduct, Bradley said.

New York DEC has already begun work toward obtaining permits to treat the stream and will be ready to move forward this fall, if the public gives its consent during an upcoming public meeting at the Port Henry Town Hall.