Opposing alewives

Every time I read about LD 1957, which just passed the Legislature, I see the words “opposed by the local guides and Passamaquoddy Tribe” and then amended to be more acceptable to the local St. Croix area. The insinuation is that there are only a few select groups opposed to allowing sea-run alewives into the entire St. Croix watershed.

This is far from the truth. There are literally hundreds of people and many environmentally friendly groups such as the Chiputneticook Lakes International Conservancy strongly opposed to allowing alewives above the Grand Falls dam simply because they have already seen the devastation to our local bass and landlocked salmon populations in Spednic Lake a few years ago when alewives were allowed in.

The recent historical evidence is very clear – alewives compete with our freshwater smelts for food, and while the rest of the reasons are a little unclear to our biologists, this causes great harm to our popular game fish in the watershed. Ask any local fisherman from Spednic or East Grand Lake and they can tell you about the damage.

Jerry Wilson

Houlton