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After the Cherryfield dam replacement, the Narraguagus River will be prime habitat for endangered Atlantic salmon. But as the climate changes, conservationists know there is still a long road ahead. Photo by Katherine Emery for The Maine Monitor. |
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Protecting endangered salmon in a time of climate change
Last month, photographer Katherine Emery and I visited the small town of Cherryfield in Washington County to see a big project: the replacement of a 60-year-old dam with a unique fishway that should mimic nature and allow endangered Atlantic salmon to swim freely up the small but wild Narraguagus River.
Cherryfield bills itself as “The Blueberry Capital of the World.” It used to be a sport fishing capital, too, with Atlantic salmon the stars of the show. These days, only about 25 adult salmon at best return to the Narraguagus each spring from the sea. And only about 1,000 return statewide, compared with hundreds of thousands in the centuries before dams and log drives.
Katherine and I didn’t see any salmon. Even the conservationists who live and breathe Atlantic salmon rarely see these elusive fish in the wild. When I returned to my desk, I told my editor that I felt like the salmon were ghosts, haunting me and the people in this story. |
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Delger Erdenesanaa talks with Ernie Atkinson, a fisheries biologist at the Maine Department of Marine Resources, along the Narraguagus River in August. Photo by Katherine Emery for The Maine Monitor. |
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But of course, they aren’t ghosts yet. I was moved by the generations of Mainers (and our Canadian neighbors) who have dedicated their lives to preventing the extinction of Atlantic salmon, and to keeping our rivers “clean, cool and connected” for the benefit of all species. It’s not just the Narraguagus. A lot of work has been done on the Penobscot River, too, much of it driven by the Penobscot Nation. Conservationists are eyeing the Kennebec River next.
These tireless efforts exemplify the hard work ahead to protect nature as the climate heats up. As I was writing this story, the United Nations made the official call that the world is not going to reach the Paris Agreement goal to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. With that news in the backdrop, this reporting and editing process was full of tough discussions about how long Atlantic salmon, a species that relies on cold water, can hold on in a warming climate — and whether they can adapt.
I don’t have the answers to those questions, and I got the sense that the scientists who study salmon don’t either. But we do know that whether these once-mighty fish come back from the brink — or whether they really do become ghosts of biodiversity past — depends on the decisions we make today. |
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Our seabird correspondent Derrick Z. Jackson is back with good news. Researchers say it was a record-breaking year in the Gulf of Maine, with 127 razorbill nests on Seal Island and 213 puffins burrows on Eastern Egg Rock.
This population growth comes as the gulf has seen a temporary reprieve from warming temperatures over the last couple of years. Dam removals on Maine rivers and the resulting river herring runs may also be adding another food source into the seabirds’ diets, Jackson reports.
Maybe this story offers hope for others trying to safeguard the world’s biodiversity. At a recent meeting of Gulf of Maine seabird researchers, veteran ecologist and puffin conservationist Richard Podolsky remarked that these birds’ comeback is proof that people can “change the future of a species.”
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Have feedback, a correction or know of something we should look into? Send it to our newsroom. You can also email The Monitor's editors: editors@themainemonitor.org.
The Maine Monitor is a publication of the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, an independent and nonpartisan nonprofit news organization that produces investigative journalism. We believe news is a public good and keep our news free to access. We have no paywall and do not charge for our newsletters. If you value the reporting we do for Maine, please consider making a donation! We cannot do this reporting without your support. |
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