Quagga War
In 2023 an infestation of quagga mussels was found in the Snake River near Twin Falls. The Idaho Department of Agriculture treated the invasive species in the fall of 2023 and 2024. Now they’re back once again.
“This is, as you know, the third year, the third treatment we've done here in the Snake River for infestation of quagga mussels. The impacts of quagga mussels obviously can be very severe,” said Lloyd Knight, Deputy Diretor of the Idaho state Department of Agriculture.
“It can cost the everyday consumer and taxpayer quite a bit of money to deal with that, and so the short-term pain of a treatment, we hope bears out in a long-term gain and not having those negative impacts on us as a state. It's really been a statewide effort to make this happen. There's a lot of folks that have put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into it,” said Knight.
“Quagga mussel is one of the most damaging, ecosystem damaging organisms that's out there for aquatic environments, in that it's a non-native species to the US,” said Jeremey Varley, Chief Treatment Engineer for the ISDA.
“It is a rapidly reproducing organism. A single breeding pair can produce over a million viable offspring in a single year. They change the dynamic of the water itself. They can crash fisheries just by that food chain upsetting aspect of quagga. It also has a bio fouler, so it has, Bissell threads or tiny hairs that it uses to attach to substrates and surfaces. So whether that's naturally occurring rocks or like the hydro dam facility down downstream, it can affect all of that as well as irrigation or drinking water infrastructure, things of that nature,” said Varley.
