After more than a decade of work to improve fish passage and habitat, the Sheepscot River Watershed Council will merge with the Sheepscot Valley Conservation Association.
The watershed council announced that they will move forward with the merger at a Nov. 1 meeting at the SVCA headquarters in Newcastle.
The SVCA board has expressed their support for the merger and is expected to finalize it later this month, said SVCA Executive Director Maureen Hoffman during a telephone interview earlier on Nov. 1.
The Watershed Council will essentially become a committee within the SVCA focusing on habitat restoration. They are looking for members to join the committee, and soon they will establish a schedule of meetings.
The watershed council shares many similar goals with the SVCA, and in fact was founded by several SVCA members in response to the listing of Atlantic salmon in the Sheepscot River. “In some ways, this is a coming home for the watershed council,” Charlie Baeder, director of the watershed council, said.
The current watershed council primarily is comprised of members involved in wildlife management, such as the Inland Fisheries & Wildlife, Dept. of Marine Resources and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). They meet a few times each year to discuss projects to improve fish passage and habitat.
On Nov. 1, they met with members of the SVCA to hear a presentation from Dept. of Marine Resources Biologist Paul Christman, who handles “everything associated with salmon” for a number of Maine’s rivers including the Sheepscot, he said.
Christman said the Sheepscot’s Atlantic salmon population is in very good shape. Like many rivers around the state, salmon are expected to see a big spike in population this year.
“I think we’ll see about a three-fold increase in the population,” Christman said.
Christman discussed the department’s ongoing restoration efforts, including a new program to plant eggs – rather than hatchery-spawned young salmon – in the Sheepscot. Christman said egg planting has been very successful in other parts of the state, and he has high hopes for the program in the Sheepscot.
This winter, Christman’s team will need volunteers to help with the egg planting.
“It’s wonderfully cold,” Christman said, “but you get a warm and fuzzy feeling.”
The Nov. 1 meeting – attended by more than a dozen people – was representative of the watershed council’s and SVCA’s hopes for the new committee’s future meetings. Both organizations hope the merger will bring more members of the public into habitat restoration efforts.
The merger is expected to benefit both organizations for a variety of reasons, Hoffman and Baeder said.
For the last few years, Baeder, as the council’s only employee, managed the council’s projects. Last year, he accepted a full-time position with the Penobscot River Restoration Trust.
“My ability, especially to initiate new projects, is greatly diminished,” Baeder said in a telephone interview on Nov. 1. He hopes with the merger, more time will be devoted to habitat restoration projects.
Baeder also said the merger ensures there’s no duplication of efforts between the two groups, helps bring the public into the habitat work, and facilitates fundraising for habitat projects.
The watershed council, although a nonprofit, never had IRS 501(3)(c) status, meaning charitable contributions to the organization were not tax deductible and many grant applications therefore required partnership with the SVCA.
“Funding was always a struggle,” Baeder said. “This is an opportunity to continue our work, but have a more permanent home.”
The SVCA is excited about the merger because it will allow them to increase their habitat restoration efforts. The land trust has 550 family memberships, and although founded 42 years ago, has been most active for the last 15 years, Hoffman said.
“We’re sort of a unique land trust, in that we not only do land protection, but also habitat restoration,” Hoffman said.
Restoration work requires a lot of time and expertise, Hoffman said, and “by joining forces, that expertise will come back in house.”
For more information on the SVCA, call 586-5616, or email svca@sheepscot.org.
