Downeast Salmon Federation News

ASF Action Alert: Support Alewife Restoration in the St. Croix Watershed Now!
 

The IJC is the international treaty body responsible for managing the boundary waters shared by the U.S. and Canada, and the IJC has ultimate authority over dams on the international St. Croix River.

The IJC’s draft alewife plan is the result of a petition that ASF, Maine Rivers, and the Natural Resources Council of Maine filed with the IJC in March 2009. Our petition asked the IJC to order fishways at dams on the river open to alewives. The fishways were closed under a state law passed by the Maine Legislature in 1995. Attempts to reverse the law in 2001 and 2008 failed, despite having sound science and strong support on our side. Unfortunately, the IJC’s plan only requires a tiny number of alewives be allowed back into the Grand Falls flowage and could halt all further restoration based on low smallmouth bass reproduction, even if that low reproduction has nothing to do with alewives! Thus, the plan holds native sea-run alewife restoration hostage to random fluctuations in smallmouth bass reproduction. This is unacceptable.

We are hoping for a large turn-out at the hearing on the 4th and we hope that you will attend. If you cannot attend, you can still submit written comments on the plan to the IJC by August 16 at: http://www.ijc.org/rel/st-croix-alewife/node/add/comment

Written comments are extremely important and they will be paid attention to! We ask that you write the IJC and express your support for unlimited access for alewives to all of their historic habitat within the St. Croix River watershed.