Much at stake in troubled waters Down East

The clear, storied waters of Grand Lake Stream and its source, West Grand Lake, provide the brood stock for nearly three-quarters of all the landlocked salmon stocked in Maine. It is said to be one of the purest strains of this relatively rare species. The town of Grand Lake Stream itself, population 150, has a small economy based upon its pull as a sporting destination.

A dubious proposal threatens that economy and sets the stage for a new battle about introducing nonnative species into a premier salmon fishery.

On May 5, the town received a special presentation from the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. Two speakers, river and stream specialist Merry Gallagher and river geologist Dr. John Field, had come to introduce a new stream study, set to begin in late May.

Gallagher said, “Part of my focus is to look for restoration candidates.” Her first slide was entitled, “Complaints.” Fewer pools for holding adult salmon, increased sedimentation, declines in salmon abundance and declines in aquatic insect hatches were included.

With close to 200 salmon having been hooked and released on opening day weekend, the complaints, as well as the mention of “restoration,” raised some eyebrows among the small gathering.

Gallagher told the assembly that she wrote a grant to the Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine Environment, a nonprofit, U.S.-Canadian partnership of government and non-government organizations. Allowing that the council only deals with diadromous species (fish that migrate between fresh and salt water), she said, “… so I wrote a grant for an eel habitat study. By looking at eels in the same riverine habitat as salmon, we may be able to learn more about the salmon habitat too. We want to determine if Grand Lake Stream is even a candidate for restoration, then find the funding for it.”

When asked where the complaints had come from, she said they had all come from just one person – the second-season owner of Weatherby’s sporting lodge, Jeff McEvoy.

Dr. Field, an independent contractor who works out of Farmington, is an expert in stream restoration and related riverine disciplines. His services, Gallagher pointed out, were part of her proposal to the Gulf of Maine Council.

Stream tampering is a local powder keg following a decade of initiatives to bring sea-run alewives up the west branch of the St. Croix River to Grand Lake Stream. In 1995 and again in 2000, the Maine Legislature blocked those attempts as well as the alewives at the Grand Falls Dam, several miles lower in the system. No sound evidence had demonstrated to a majority of representatives that alewives had ever been native to the upper reaches of the St. Croix watershed, which includes Grand Lake Stream. They had taken testimony from guides, lodge owners, and sportsmen who told them that the introduction of alewives into neighboring Spednic Lake in the early 1980s was followed by a “bass crash,” an encore of which would be fatal to the local economy.

Now, those fears are flaring up again. A few days after the meeting, Jon Kachmar, Habitat Restoration Coordinator with the Gulf of Maine Program gave a bluntly different view of the study his organization is funding. “Our aim is to restore sea-run fish to this system. What this is about for us, and the reason we’re in this, is riverine restoration to that system that will improve habitat for diadromous species. We want to enhance that huge potential habitat, and this is particularly true of alewives.”

In the telephone interview, Kachmar said that the $45,080 grant was approved because of help and matching funds from MIF&W, a letter of support from the director of stock enhancement for the Department of Marine Resources, and letters from some seasonal residents.

Kachmar read all three of the project’s objectives from the grant itself, two of which deal with “determining channel instability” and the collection of “baseline bio-data.” A third, “Identify and design restoration solutions for two sites where improved channel stability will most significantly enhance diadromous fish restoration,” seems to make the assumption before the study begins, that there are two places on the stream that need restoring.

This latest alewife strategy, though imaginative, hopes to divert the local dialog to salmon habitat while attempting to retrofit the stream for diadromous fish runs. Even more remarkable is a financially strapped DIF&W producing matching funds with a marine organization whose chief objective is to introduce non-native species to an inland fishery.

The effort seems to have overstepped and upstaged Region C fisheries biologists, who have successfully monitored and managed the stream for 35 years. “We weren’t told about it until. … I think last December, at which time it was already in the works,” said senior biologist Ron Brokaw. Along with Rick Jordan and Gregg Burr, he is not openly fighting the study, though all three would presumably oppose stream heroics when there is no pervasive feeling that it is in trouble.

Much is at stake for a local community that depends on the health and well-being of its fishery, and for the state, which depends on this particular fishery for most of its salmon. Both should expect honesty and straight dealing from its public employees at DIF&W.

Randy Spencer is a Master Maine Guide, writer and musician from Grand Lake Stream.