Parks Canada says it’s not feasible to eradicate zebra mussels from Clear Lake

January 28, 2025 Canuck

Fourteen months after live zebra mussels were found in Clear Lake, Parks Canada says it’s not feasible to eradicate the invasive species from the largest body of water in Riding Mountain National Park.

Parks Canada announced Tuesday it made the determination after seeking input and advice from leading scientific experts, Indigenous advisors and officials with the province of Manitoba.

Adult zebra mussels were first found in the western Manitoba lake in November 2023. An effort to contain them within an underwater curtain at the Boat Cove area near Wasagaming during the summer of 2024 did not succeed.

Then in fall 2024, hundreds of live juvenile zebra mussels were found attached to docks and other structures near the east end of Clear Lake, Parks Canada said.

“This indicated that zebra mussels are not isolated to the Boat Cove area of the lake, where they had previously been found and where the containment curtain had been installed,” Parks Canada said in an information bulletin.

Parks Canada will continue to monitor water quality in Clear Lake and determine how to manage the lake now that zebra mussels are established in it.

The federal agency also said it will continue to try to prevent other invasive species — including black algae, spiny water fleas and rusty crayfish — from entering Clear Lake.

It also said it will try to prevent the spread of zebra mussels from Clear Lake to other bodies of water.

Zebra mussels were first found in Manitoba in Lake Winnipeg in 2013 and have since been found in Cedar Lake, Lake Manitoba and other bodies of water.

Zebra mussels have been eradicated successfully with the use of potash in a handful of small bodies of water on this continent, according to Invasive Mussel Collaborative, an organization of U.S. states, Canadian provinces, Indigenous nations and other public bodies.

Those small bodies of water include a quarry in Virginia in 2006 and several harbours in a small lake southwest of Minneapolis in 2014, the Invasive Mussel Collaborative says on its website.

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