September 1, 2020
Bret called the meeting at KwaTaqNuk to order at 12:15 with 15 in attendance and 4 Zooming in.
Bret announced a upcoming District Polio meeting which will be Zoomed and where attendance is being encouraged with Covid safegurards being planned. Separately, the WHO has announced Africa is now been polio free for 4 years, so the 2 remaining countries with the wild polio virus are Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Steve gave the Inspiration and Jake chose "God Bless America" as the song.
Keith and Jeff had "Happy" moments. Jake won the Raffle and donated his winnings to Mission Valley Aquatics. Bret acted as Justice and stumped the crowd with an April 15, 1912 question.
For the program, Rotary member Tom Bansak of the Flathead Lake Biological Station gave an update on the State of the Station. Covid-19 has affected the operations significantly as there have been 9 major steps taken to minimize the possible effects through social distancing. . Research and monitoring are continuing, education efforts have gone more on-line, video production ramped up and the visiting artist program expanded. All conferences were cancelled causing a revenue loss that would normally be used to maintenance of the 80 acres and 60 buildings.
There has been various upgrades and repairs made to the facilities and an important effort made to erosion control projects that are being used around the lake-similar to the beach at Salish Point in using nature's actions as a buffer rather than breakwalls which can exacerbate the problem.
There hasn't been an instance of mussels in the watershed, although there has been an increase in contaminated boats at the checkpoints.
The ZOOM experience was the best so far for the participants-maybe we will figure it out after all!