Gulf of Maine Times

Gulf Log

Protecting Sheepscot salmon

Late last summer, the Sheepscot Valley Conservation Association (SVCA) opened up a 27 acre preserve in Palermo, Maine, an important part of the association’s strategy to protect the river’s watershed and its Atlantic salmon population. Three tracts of land—the Look Property, the Whitefield Salmon Preserve and the new Palermo Preserve, a total of 163 acres—have now been purchased outright. Easements have been arranged for two properties, Happy Farm and Coastal Enterprises, totaling 77 acres. Of the twelve miles of the river that SVCA currently owns or holds easements on, four miles of salmon habitat frontage is now protected.

The Sheepscot is the southernmost of Maine’s rivers to provide the right conditions for spawning salmon, but the environment is delicate and easily threatened. Acid rain and industrial, agricultural and other pollutants from rapid development has already eliminated salmon from rivers farther south. The goal of the SVCA’s Salmon Habitat Protection Program is to prevent that from happening in the Sheepscot. When the program began four years ago, the first step was to create a map of the river that identified essential salmon habitat. Using a sophisticated GIS mapping system that allows multiple computer-generated overlays, the SVCA collated scientific data and plotted specific locations necessary for salmon spawning, rearing and migration.

Taking into account the organization’s ability to craft conservation easements and to purchase land, the SVCA next overlaid the habitat map with a map of existing property boundaries. They then looked for areas where large tracts of land coincided with desirable habitat, taking into account that a few such sizable tracts could be more efficiently conserved than could multiple small tracts. This analysis produced six “focus areas” to guide the SVCA in their process of land acquisition.

Using this map as a guide, the SVCA then set to action. The Happy Farm easement is an example of how SVCA’s conservation efforts can preserve not only wildlife but human habitat as well. In 2002, SVCA learned that the owner of the Happy Farm, Lydia Chase, was interested in transferring ownership of the farm to her nephew, Pat, and his wife Robin. The problem was, she needed the income from the land and the Chase’s did not have the financial ability to purchase the entire farm. To solve this impasse, SVCA worked with Pat and Robin to develop a conservation easement on the farm. SVCA purchased the development rights, which made the land less valuable, bringing the price within reach for the Chases to purchase it. The easement included the creation of a 200-foot buffer, following the course of the river, in which no development or agricultural activities would take place. The buffer, and the fact that the Chases are organic dairy farmers, protects an intense zone of salmon habitat. Funds for the easement purchase were provided by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

“Here was an opportunity to help a Maine family with deep roots in their land and a long tradition of successful farming to continue a valuable way of life,” says Maureen Hoffman SVCA’s executive director. “And yet to also stimulate the health of the river and its salmon population. It was a win-win situation for all involved.”

Guided by their six focus areas, SVCA closely monitors many sources, including real estate advertisements in local newspapers, for land that comes on the market. In 2001, the SVCA noticed an advertisement for 27 acres in Palermo along the Sheepscot in one of the focus areas. SVCA purchased the property and, two years year later, acquired an adjoining 56-acre parcel. Both of these acquisitions were facilitated by grants from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the Maine Atlantic Salmon Commission.

Now the Palermo site is open to the public with approximately one mile of cleared trails. The SVCA is working on educational kiosks that will be installed next summer—explaining, among other things, the importance of the property for the river’s salmon population.

—Sam Low

When it comes to conservation plans, the simpler the better

As the world’s natural areas become increasingly fragmented and degraded from development and other human impacts, preserving biodiversity is a major challenge facing conservation agencies and resource managers.

When it comes to determining the best places to invest conservation dollars, new high-tech tools are available to help identify optimal sites for creating nature reserve networks.

One example is a computer software program called Marxan, designed at the University of Queensland. The program guided the development of a new marine zoning plan for Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

But when a conservation effort is to play out over a number of years a simpler, old-fashioned approach may be more effective for preserving biodiversity, according to a recent paper published in the scientific journal Ecology Letters.

Researchers Eli Meir, Sandy Andelman and Hugh P. Possingham conducted a study using data on bird species in the Pacific Northwest to compare conservation results over a ten-year period if planners followed a computer-modeled plan verses simple, tried-and-tested conservation rules.

The computer-guided scheme called for protecting property only if the area was considered essential to a predetermined, static plan.

The simple approach offered more adaptability and allowed for protecting areas as they came available based upon whether or not the habitat was irreplaceable or rich in species.

The scientists found that a computer-modeled plan is effective if a reserve is to be established in its entirety within a brief span of time—as in the case of government-owned sites such as the Great Barrier Reef.

Simple rules performed best, however, when a reserve is to be pieced together over a number of years and uncertainties associated with budget constraints and acquisitions of private property are added to the mix.

In such cases, “conservation resources might be better invested in determining the biodiversity value and relative importance of particular sites, rather than in developing comprehensive designs for large-scale networks of sites,” they wrote.

The scientists determined that comprehensive conservation plans—often considered valuable as roadmaps that make governments more willing to invest in conservation efforts—would have to be updated annually in order to be as effective as using simple rules.

—Maureen Kelly

The Spirit of Massachusetts

Beginning next spring, the Center for Coastal Studies, based in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and the Ocean Classroom Foundation, based in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, will launch a series of public education programs, called MassSail, that will use the 125-foot schooner, Spirit of Massachusetts, to give the public a better understanding of the state’s fragile coastal and marine environments.

Scheduled to begin in Boston next May, MassSail programs will be conducted in Massachusetts waters from May to September. While the schedule for 2005 has not yet been set, the two organizations have come up with a menu of different programs for a broad spectrum of audiences, age groups and constituencies. These include sails based in various communities with shipboard programs for different grade levels, one-week summer camp programs for teens ages 13 to 16 and a two-week whale research program for college credit for students ages 16 to 22. There will also be sails to inform the public about environmental circumstances that exist behind the policies and politics of marine resource management.

Built in 1984 at the Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston for service as a sail training ship, the Spirit is modeled after the Gloucester fishing schooner Fredonia, designed by Edward Burgess in 1889. These schooners were famous throughout the world as fast and able vessels of the North Atlantic fisheries, sailing winter and summer to the rich grounds of the Grand Banks and Georges Bank. For images of the Spirit and further information, go to www.coastalstudies.org.

Birds of a feather…

Peter Hicklin, a biologist for the Canadian Wildlife Service, has been researching the semipalmated sandpiper in the Upper Bay of Fundy since 1981. The Bay is a feeding stopover for the birds who typically arrive in late summer weighing about 21 grams. They more than double their weight by feasting on Corophium, or mud shrimp, before flying non-stop to South America.

In recent bird banding activities, Hicklin discovered sandpipers that were banded at the same time, were also caught together ten days later. The observation shatters the long-held belief that the birds randomly flocked or grouped together, Hicklin said. Instead it appears that birds that fly together, stay together. “Semipalmated sandpipers migrate in distinct groupings within a flock,” Hicklin reported at the Bay of Fundy Ecosystem Partnership conference held in Cornwallis, Nova Scotia in October. “These groups may reflect genetically related groups. They are far more structured than we ever thought.” The finding puts the protection of these birds in a different light, he said, adding, “It may be that specific habitats are used for specific groups. And conservation efforts need to take that into consideration.”