The Once and Future Connecticut River

Trump’s chainsaw massacre of federal agencies is impeding fish and wildlife restoration nationwide. At this writing, the regional headquarters of the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) in Hadley, Massachusetts, is one of 164 federal offices on the chopping block. It oversees seventy-nine national wildlife refuges, including the Silvio Conte Refuge in the Connecticut River states of Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.

“All [USFWS] spending has been essentially halted,” comments Dr. David Perkins, who retired in late November as director of the USFWS Cronin Aquatic Resource Center in Sunderland, Massachusetts. “It’s very disruptive. Lots of probationary staff have been let go, and plans call for more extensive reductions. My colleagues can’t even buy supplies or fix boats. And with reductions the administration talks about, I think the worst is yet to come.”

Michael Bartlett, retired director of the USFWS New England Field Office in Concord, New Hampshire, warns, “We’re losing top-of-the-line experts on endangered species. What happens to the federal aid program for fisheries projects that’s so critical for state fish and game departments? Where does that money and expertise go? We don’t know.”

Bill Archambault, USFWS Deputy Assistant Regional Director for Fisheries, opted for administrative leave in February. “There will be big reductions in funds for fish passage and on-the-ground conservation,” he says. “We may lose capacity for biologists and fish-passage engineers to work on hydropower relicensing. Funding for long-term programs like fish passage isn’t congressionally authorized; it can be canceled with a swipe of a pen.”

Nonprofit organizations have been hard hit, too. The Connecticut River Conservancy (CRC) has had $13 million in federal funds frozen. “The shortsightedness of this is shocking,” remarks CRC director Rebecca Todd. And that’s just one example.

People who love the Connecticut River and the biodiversity and other social benefits it provides must not stand aside while this treasure is again destroyed in a money-saving attempt as brainless as burning down one’s house to avoid electric bills. To fight successfully for the protection and continued recovery of the Connecticut River system, we need to understand past investment in time, money, and effort and the enormous returns on that investment.

What We’ve Learned about Fish and Mussels
In the early nineteenth century, America’s mightiest Atlantic salmon run died. Dams wiped it out. The multi-million-dollar, multi-agency Connecticut River recovery effort began in 1967. It was never just about salmon, but salmon were the big dream and motivator.

With no native stock, managers had to get eggs from the nearest salmon river, Maine’s Penobscot. But Penobscot smolts are genetically programmed to hit the Gulf of Maine in April where it’s still winter. When Penobscot-origin smolts hit Long Island Sound in April it was high spring, and they were gorged on by striped bass, bluefish, and piscivorous birds. Meager returns dwindled. By 2012 it was clear that the 45-year effort to resurrect the Connecticut River’s salmon run had failed, and the project was abandoned.

Still, the enormous investment in pollution abatement, mainstem fish passage, and dam removal on tributaries was far from wasted. Aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems have rebounded to an extent never imagined by the public or even biologists.

In 1967, 19,484 American shad were counted at the fish lift at Holyoke, Massachusetts; in 2024 the number was 432,481. Now shad reach southern Vermont and New Hampshire.

In 1967 no American eels were counted at Holyoke. In 2024, 18,322 were documented.

In 1967, 46 striped bass were counted at Holyoke; in 2024, despite gross overfishing, 442.

Sea lampreys, reviled in 1967 and even interdicted and killed by Maine managers, are now universally recognized in their native range as a keystone species. In 1975 (the first year sea lampreys were counted at Holyoke) there were 23,000; in 2024, 53,616. Now they’re spawning in northern New Hampshire and Vermont.

Here’s why that’s a good thing. By clearing wide swaths of silt for communal nests, lampreys create habitat for invertebrates and spawning areas for fish. They feed fish with their prolific eggs. They improve water quality by filter feeding during their four- to seven-year larval stage under substrate. Minnows and snails around lamprey nests are larger and more fecund. Lampreys sustain all manner of avian and mammalian predators and scavengers. And because lampreys die after spawning, they transport marine nutrients to sterile, glaciated headwaters, revitalizing aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.

Environmental consultant Stephen Gephard, formerly Connecticut’s top migratory fish biologist, calls lampreys “environmental engineers.” When he snorkels the river he sees lamprey carcasses carpeted with feeding caddisfly larvae—prime food for fish and, in their adult stage, for birds and bats.

When the Connecticut River Atlantic Salmon Commission was sunsetted by law in 2023, members launched the Connecticut River Migratory Fish Restoration Cooperative. “It will focus on all migratory fish and will utilize the best techniques for passage,” says Ken Sprankle, Project Leader for the Connecticut River Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office. “Management plans must be considered by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for dam relicensing. That will be a powerful tool.”

The watershed supports thirteen mussel species, including the paper pondshell discovered in May 2023 by University of Massachuseets (UMass) grad student Jacqueline Stephens, who analyzed genetics of glochidia on blueback herring. Her PhD co-advisor was the Cronin Aquatic Resource Center’s Dr. David Perkins.

Mussels depend on fish to distribute their larvae (glochidia) which adhere to gills and fins, then drop off. Species like the paper pondshell spew clouds of glochidia that attach to passing hosts such as blueback herring and alewives (collectively “river herring”). River herring are filter feeders, so they’re not attracted to minnow-like decoys waved by species like the imperiled yellow lampmussel. When a predator fish hits the decoy, it gets blasted with glochidia.

Ethan Nedeau, an independent consultant who has studied Connecticut River mussels since 2000, estimates yellow lampmussel numbers and distribution via mark-and-recapture studies. He has documented a prolific population between Hartford and Holyoke.

White perch, known to host yellow lampmussels, don’t move around in the river as much or as far as related striped bass. No one knew if stripers hosted yellow lampmussels until UMass grad student Stefanie Farrington (also co-advised by Perkins) proved it in June 2023. Her discovery may explain why these mussels thrive in the Hartford-Holyoke stretch.

“We’re now finding yellow lampmussels in many different places,” reports Perkins. “That’s encouraging.” At the Cronin Center he oversaw successful propagation of mussels, including the yellow lampmussel, eastern lampmussel, and the federally endangered dwarf wedgemussel. Farrington is using sonar to find suitable habitat for seeding or translocation.

The public doesn’t eat and rarely sees freshwater mussels. Why should it care about them? Like larval lampreys, mussels purify water by filtering out contaminants. They feed fish, turtles, herons, ducks, otters, minks, muskrats, opossums, raccoons, and skunks. Mussel beds create rich ecosystems, supporting invertebrates which feed fish, frogs, turtles, and insectivorous birds which feed raptors. Fish that eat the invertebrates feed larger fish, which also feed turtles, herons, ducks, otters, and minks, as well as eagles, ospreys, cormorants, mergansers, kingfishers, and herons. When these fish die, they feed scavengers, including bears, foxes, coyotes, fishers, and vultures.

“The river is so big,” Gephard explains, “that a before-and-after study of mussel recovery is impossible. We’ve documented glochidia on fish going up into new habitat. If mussels aren’t recolonizing, it wouldn’t make sense. I think we have to take it on blind faith. Big fishways don’t pass fish like tessellated darters [hosts for the dwarf wedgemussel] or blacknose dace [hosts for the triangle floater]. That’s why dam removal on tributaries is so important.”

What We’ve Learned about Dam Removal
Sally Harold, former fish restoration project director for The Nature Conservancy (TNC), works with Gephard in a consulting company she founded called RiverWork. The best payoff for removing dams is watching the quick surge of new life.

“When you see a channel scoured of silt you know that’s habitat for migratory and non-migratory fish,” says Harold. Even in urban settings herons suddenly line the banks. Sea lampreys, American eels, and river herring swarm in. Resident minnows like common shiners chow down on lamprey eggs. Spottail shiners arrive to feed on river herring eggs. Predator fish and piscivorous birds feast on these and other minnows. Previously unknown mussel beds appear. Exposed floodplains green up and draw wildlife.

But the public tends to love impoundments, so making the case for dam removal can be difficult. In 2024 Harold and Gephard secured funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the Connecticut Port Authority to take out the Highland Pond Dam on Sawmill Brook in Middletown, Connecticut. Harold wrote the grant applications for the Middlesex Land Trust, the dam’s owner.

“People walk their dogs around the pond,” she says. “Some of them oppose the project because they know what they know. They envision a muddy mess with no geese or swans. We inform them that we’re supporting species in trouble, that there are lots of impoundments but not many free-flowing streams. In one way, the slow pace of dam removal is helpful because it gives people time to gain trust in us and gives us time to direct them to restored sites they can look at.”

Among these showcases is the Eightmile River in Lyme, Connecticut, where a decade ago the Ed Bills Dam choked flow and fish. The dam owner wanted it removed, but dam removal is costly. Funding partners included TNC, American Rivers, federal and state agencies, and private donors.

“The site is very pretty,” says Harold. “We planted shrubs and trees, but what came back from the native seed bank is stunning. The floodplain teems with bird and animal life. Steve and I try to snorkel the river every year. Most people don’t snorkel streams, but when you do, you’re reminded of how interconnected the web of life is.”

For ten years, the Connecticut River Conservancy has been demolishing dams and taking out fish-blocking culverts on tributaries in New Hampshire and Vermont. Some of the recovery is almost instantaneous. “When we start pounding out a dam there are suddenly brook trout two feet from the excavator,” says CRC’s program director Ron Rhodes. “It’s amazing how quickly they sense that first flush of water. We’ve had to capture them to move them out of work areas.” Last year the CRC did its first dam removal project in Massachusetts (on the Sawmill River in Shutesbury) and its first lamprey project (on the Saxtons River near Bellows Falls, Vermont).

“Floodplain restoration is critical,” declares Harold. “People are concerned about flooding, especially with more big storms. An impoundment is like a full bucket. The rim is the dam with water flowing over it. There’s no stormwater retention. Whatever water comes in goes over the spillway. When you tip that bucket over—dam removal—you get back the stream channel and, where the pond was, a wide floodplain that absorbs floodwater and supports plants and wildlife.”

I saw the results of a large TNC floodplain restoration in Longmeadow, Massachusetts, on the Silvio Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge, the project of Christian Marks (now an ecologist with Massachusetts Audubon) and Markelle Smith (now director of the Connecticut River Watershed Partnership, a network of public and private partners across four states).

They’d planted 8,000 floodplain trees and shrubs, among them disease-resistant elms. Elms grow highest on the floodplain. So, as the river drops, they produce the first seeds—a salvation for granivore birds exhausted and famished from northbound migration. As water continues to recede, seeds are produced by silver maples, then cottonwoods, then willows, each repast coinciding with arrival of different granivores.

Rich sediment dropped by the river blazed with wildflowers and forbs on which hummingbirds, butterflies, and bees nectared. Goldfinches plucked thistle seeds. All this would have been impossible had not Marks and Smith eradicated invading, non-native plants with herbicide.

Challenges
“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe,” wrote John Muir—an observation that perfectly applies to picking out Atlantic salmon for the symbol of Connecticut River restoration. But despite all the other recoveries made possible by that failed effort, more needs to happen.

The big migration bottlenecks are fishways at the mainstem dam at Turners Falls, Massachusetts, and Rainbow Dam on the Farmington River at Windsor, Connecticut. Little was known about fishway design when the first fishways were built in the 1970s. For example, Gephard notes that, “At Rainbow, slots are ten inches wide. There’s too much turbulence, and shad and river herring don’t like to pass in single file.” He added, “A fish lift is proposed at Turner’s Falls.”

American Rivers lists the Farmington River, the Connecticut’s largest tributary, as one of the nation’s ten most endangered rivers because, as it states on its website, the owner of Rainbow Dam, Stanley Black and Decker, “has ignored Connecticut’s environmental laws and held the Farmington River hostage.”

Other challenges include the fact that few shad are returning for a second spawning. “We don’t know why, but we want more,” Sprankle says. “One factor might be downstream survival through hydro projects. When we did these projects in the 1980s, downstream passage wasn’t addressed.”

And blueback herring are in freefall. In the 1980s around 630,000 were annually counted at Holyoke; in 2024, 688. The problem isn’t in the river. They’re dying in the ocean as bycatch of the commercial Atlantic herring fishery. Atlantic herring fishermen had been successfully fighting regulations in court. But Connecticut River fisheries biologists were gaining momentum with the New England Fisheries Management Council about controlling blueback herring bycatch. Now the basic message from the Trump administration is: “We’re gonna get regulators out of your hair. You guys can catch as many fish as you want, anywhere, any species. Have at it.”

Still, it took 58 years for the Connecticut River to come back to life. It won’t die again in four. Advocates must take the long view by planning well beyond Trump’s term.

For example, The Connecticut River Watershed Partnership Act that expired in the 118th Congress in 2023 will be sponsored again this year by the partnership and under the same name. It directs USFWS to identify needed watershed restoration projects and establishes grants for implementation.

When I asked partnership director Markelle Smith if she thinks the group’s bill has a chance in this hideous political climate, her reply spoke volumes. “No,” she said. “We just need to keep it before the public. It’s typical for legislation like this to take a while to pass. The Delaware River Basin Conservation Act took a decade.”

This sort of patience and long view—combined with activism and protest during the next four years—can limit Trump-administration damage to the biodiversity and other social benefits of the Connecticut River.

Ted Williams is a former information officer for the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. His last piece for Estuary was “Green Bullets” in the Fall 2024 issue.