In this week’s Maine Sunday Telegram, I wrote about the continuing recovery of river herring — alewives and blueback erring — in Maine rivers after the removal of major dams and other obstructions in recent years.
The Kennebec has seen the biggest run — 3.8 million fish — of the post-dam era, and the St. Croix has set a 20 year record after a legislative sentence against the forage fish was repealed a few years ago.
I’ve written on alewives quite a few times over the years, starting with the epic argument over the St. Croix fish passages. My Press Herald colleague Kevin Miller had this overview of the effort to remove the dams a couple of years back.
COLIN WOODARD is a New York Times bestselling author, historian and award-winning journalist. He is the author of seven books that have been translated into a dozen foreign languages and inspired an NBC television drama. He is currently Director of Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Affairs at Salve Regina University. As State and National Affairs Writer at Maine's Portland Press Herald, he won a 2012 George Polk Award and was a finalist for a 2016 Pulitzer Prize. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, The Economist, Smithsonian and dozens of other major publications.