In June 2025 the Pelican Lake Association completed a Comprehensive Management Plan for the lake, prepared by Onterra, LLC of De Pere, Wisconsin. It is the most thorough account of Pelican Lake’s condition ever assembled, and it is the document behind most of what the association does on the water.
The work was funded by the association together with two Wisconsin DNR lake planning grants, LPL-1832-23 and LPL-1833-23, and guided by a planning committee of association members chaired by the Water Quality Committee chair. A stakeholder survey of lake users fed into it.
What is in it
- Lake water quality — phosphorus, chlorophyll, water clarity and chloride, measured against statewide and regional comparisons
- Watershed assessment — where the water comes from, and what it carries with it
- Aquatic plants — the native plant community and how it has changed
- Eurasian watermilfoil — the extent of the infestation and what has been tried against it
- Fisheries data — DNR survey results brought together in one place
- Implementation plan — the goals and actions that follow from all of the above, each with a timeframe and someone responsible for it
Section 5.0, the Implementation Plan, is the part the board and committees work from. It is where the findings turn into things that actually get done, and it names who is responsible for each one.
A few things it establishes
Pelican Lake is a drainage lake of roughly 3,544 acres with a maximum depth of 39 feet, sitting in the Towns of Schoepke and Enterprise. Water leaves through Outlet Bay and the South Pelican Dam into the Pelican River, which joins the Wisconsin River at Rhinelander.
The lake is one of 21 reservoirs in the Wisconsin Valley Improvement Company system, and one of the 16 that are natural lakes rather than built ones. Its summer water level is held within an operating range of about six inches — which is why the lake looks much the same in August as it did in June, and why that is not an accident.
The plan also records that Pelican has a large watershed relative to its size. More land draining into a lake means more of what happens on that land ends up in the water, which is the reason shoreline and roadside work matters as much as anything done on the lake itself.
The full plan runs to 107 pages and the file is about 4 MB. It may take a moment to download on a phone.