Glacier Park easing motorboats back onto Lake McDonald

Glacier National Park has allowed some inholders to use motorized boats on Lake McDonald, park spokeswoman Lauren Alley confirmed last week.

The craft have been inspected for aquatic invasive species and were quarantined for 30 days, Alley said.

Glacier banned motorized watercraft earlier this year after non-native invasive mussels were found east of the divide in the Tiber Reservoir north of Great Falls and Canyon Ferry Reservoir near Helena.

That prompted the Park to allow only non-motorized, non-trailered use from boats outside the Park on its lakes. Motorized concessionaire boats, like those run by the Glacier Park Boat Co., were initially the only ones allowed on the lakes.

But Alley said the Park had been in talks with inholders about the motor boat ban since it was implemented. Inholders are private landowners in the Park. There are dozens of inholders along the shores of Lake McDonald and many are wealthy families with long ties to the Park. Many put their boats up for the winter in boat houses on their own property.

Alley said the motorized use is being allowed on Lake McDonald only and currently only with inholders. She said the Park is currently crafting a program that would allow the general public to use motorized boats on Lake McDonald, through an inspection and 30-day quarantine program along with a seal program similar to what is in place on Whitefish Lake.

Under the inspect and seal program, a seal is fixed between the boat and the trailer after a clean inspection. The boat owner will then be able to return to the lake in 30 days and launch their boat after the seal is removed by an Park Service inspection employee, provided the seal is not broken between their boat and trailer. If they want to launch on Lake McDonald again, they can have another seal placed on their boat and trailer upon exiting the lake, and need not wait another 30 days to launch, as long as the affixed seal is intact.

“Quarantining a cleaned, drained, and dry boat for 30 days ensures that all invasive mussels and mussel larvae that may be missed during an inspection or decontamination process are dead,” Glacier Superintendent Jeff Mow said in a release. “Our objective is to provide an appropriate level of user access to the extent that we can, and ensure that those motorboats do not pose a risk to park waters.”

In the next two weeks, the park will release quarantine and inspection procedures for people living outside the park who would like to launch their boat on Lake McDonald.

But two weeks, plus a 30-day quarantine, wouldn’t allow anyone to launch — outside of inholders — until early September.

The program will only be for Lake McDonald at this point. All other waters would remain closed to motorized or non-motorized trailered boats for the time being.

People with non-motorized, non-trailered craft can use park waters, but must get an inspection before launching.

Invasive mussels are seen as a significant threat to Glacier’s ecosystem. If they become established, they have the potential to turn the aquatic ecosystem on its head, as billions of the small mussels could colonize a lake, out-competing native fishes and other organisms for food.

To date, the mussels haven’t been found in the Columbia River Basin. Glacier is the headwaters to the basin, so if the Park gets infected, the mussels would have the potential to migrate to all the waters downstream.

Glacier is also testing its waters to see if any have become infected using DNA analysis.