News & Events

LKRLT Annual Meeting

Day's Ferry Congregational Church

Please join us for cookies, conversation and conservation highlights from the last year.

We will have brief reports from the President and board chairs followed by refreshments and an informative talk by Gail Wippelhauser a Marine Resources Scientist with the Maine Department of Marine Resources.

We enjoy moving our meeting around the region
that we support. Last year we were in Bath, the year before in Georgetown, even on a boat one year! We hope this enables (and entices) a majority of our membership to attend.

RAFFLE for two tickets on the Maine Maritime Museum "Extraordinary Wildlife of the Kennebec River Cruise"!!!

It is a fun chance to see members, hear your thoughts and update you on our goals. We even need your help on a special decision (details at the meeting).

Gail Wippelhauser a Marine Resources Scientist with the Maine Department of Marine Resources will present: 30 years of diadromous fish restoration in the Kennebec River

The Kennebec River historically supported large runs of Maine’s 12 species of native diadromous fishes, but this abundance was reduced over time by dam construction and poor water quality.  In the mid-1970s the Department of Marine Resources (DMR) embarked on a diadromous fish restoration program in the lower Kennebec River that included assessing the distribution, abundance, and habitat of shortnose sturgeon and Atlantic sturgeon, and stocking striped bass fingerlings.  Three hydropower settlement agreements, signed between 1985 and 2002, expanded the restoration program, and have resulted in the removal of Edwards Dam and Madison Electric Works Dam; the installation of fish passage or a schedule or trigger for fish passage at nine dams; the installation of fish passage by DMR at four nonhydropower dams; and funding for stocking of alewives, American shad, and Atlantic salmon.  The success of the restoration program is now evident, although there have been some delays in fish passage.  The 17-mile reach made accessible by removal of Edwards Dam is the most productive freshwater section of the river, and is utilized at least nine of the diadromous species.  Passage became operational at the first dam on the mainstem Kennebec in 2006, and small numbers of American shad, alewife, blueback herring, and Atlantic salmon are now being passed upriver.  Alewives currently are passed into the Sebasticook River, the Kennebec’s largest tributary, via an interim fish pump at the first dam, but once past that obstacle they have access to approximately 33% of historical spawning habitat. What’s next?