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River champion Steve Brooke never gives up
Steve Brooke doesn’t actually remember his “first fish.” But there is a memento of that moment, a photo of a not-yet-year-old Brooke sitting on his mom’s lap, her holding a pretty cutthroat trout caught near the family’s home in Colorado Springs. Steve Brooke got an early introduction to trout. Not yet 1, here he sits…
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Monumental agreement for Maine’s Atlantic salmon
Setting the stage for dam removal and Atlantic salmon recovery In the early 1800s, as many as 200,000 Atlantic salmon would return to Maine’s Kennebec River for their annual spawning run. In 2025, just 47 adult Atlantic salmon — designated as a federally endangered species — swam up the river to Lockwood Dam, where they…
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Avoiding science imperils salmon
A long-awaited environmental impact statement (EIS) regarding plans for fish passage improvements on Maine’s Kennebec River finally dropped on Feb. 28. Trout Unlimited and our many partners and supporters who are invested in the health of the Kennebec are disappointed that the EIS ignores the best available science and could doom endangered Atlantic salmon to…
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Court rules Kennebec dam owner must re-apply for water quality permit
A U.S. circuit court of appeals recently quashed energy conglomerate Brookfield Renewable’s bid to overturn the state of Maine’s denial of a water quality permit for the Shawmut dam on the Kennebec River. Kirt Mayland is an attorney who specializes in water and hydroelectric issues. We recently caught up with Mayland, who assists Trout Unlimited’s…
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The public has spoken: Go all in on recovering the Kennebec River
It’s Atlantic salmon spawning season on Maine’s Kennebec River, and the regal fish are making their way from the Atlantic Ocean into the river on their annual run. As we know, it’s a run that’s just a tiny fraction of what it once was; those federally endangered salmon and other migratory species are halted by…
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Let’s urge FERC to improve Kennebec dams plan
It is estimated that just a couple thousand adult salmon return each spring to rivers in Maine — the only state that still has Atlantic salmon migrations.
Draft environmental impact study should go further to improve fish passage and save Atlantic salmon “Every spring, for thousands of years, the rivers that empty into the North Atlantic Ocean turned silver with migrating fish. Tomcod and rainbow smelt swam out from beneath melting ice. Young eels found their way from the Sargasso Seas. Alewives…
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FERC plans sells Kennebec’s endangered Atlantic salmon short
This week, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission released a Draft EIS affecting four hydroelectric dams on Maine’s Kennebec River. The FERC recommendations amount to incremental improvements over what is now a dire situation for Atlantic salmon in the Kennebec. We have tried the incremental approach before on rivers like the Connecticut, Merrimack, Saco, and Androscoggin.…
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