TWIN FALLS — “Stay away from the Snake River” is the warning a number of businesses are shouting from the rooftops.
Unfortunately, many aren’t heeding the warnings, Idaho Department of Fish and Game spokesman Terry Thompson instructed the Times-News on Friday.
With the recent discovery of the tiny quagga mussel larvae within the Snake River at Centennial Waterfront Park, many boaters, kayakers and anglers are in search of different places to recreate.
“The variety of vehicles making an attempt to get into Shoshone Falls is staggering,” Thompson mentioned.
The Idaho Department of Agriculture, which has taken the lead in battling the invasive species, has closed the river from Idaho Power Co.’s hydroelectric plant — a number of miles beneath the Hansen Bridge — downstream to Niagara Springs State Park, south of Wendell.
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“This stay-out order consists of all water-related actions, together with fishing, wading, utilizing floating duck decoys, and so on. Any waterborne conveyance — whether or not it’s a ship, a kayak, a stand-up paddleboard or float tube — poses a danger of spreading these mussels,” Idaho Power mentioned Friday in an e-mail.
The Fish and Game division has taken a step additional by closing the river to fishing, searching and trapping all the best way to Idaho Highway 46 at Clear Lakes close to Buhl, Thompson mentioned.
Other our bodies of water are closed as a precaution, together with Murtaugh Lake, Dierkes Lake, Wilson Lake, Oakley Reservoir, Box Canyon, Salmon Falls Creek Reservoir, and now Lake Walcott on the Snake River in Minidoka County.
If the mussels unfold unchecked in Idaho, it might cost the state lots of of tens of millions of {dollars} in precise and oblique prices, mentioned Braden Jensen, director of governmental affairs for Idaho Farm Bureau Federation.
“If they become established here, they will have an extreme cost to deal with,” Jensen mentioned in a press release. “I think it’s incumbent upon all of us to do our part to be really conscientious of what we’re putting into the water, and where our watercraft and other possible conveyances have been before. I would really encourage people to take heed to the state’s campaign: clean, drain and dry these things that go into the river, every single time.”
“We have to maintain the message in entrance of individuals,” he mentioned. “Even dogs ought to keep out of the river.”
Mychel Matthews is the managing editor on the Times-News. Contact Matthews at [email protected] or 208-735-3233.
