Maine now supports the only wild Atlantic salmon spawning runs in the United States. Photo courtesy of Bill Hanson

In the unorganized western Maine township of East Madrid, Perham Stream spills through a fertile valley that in the late 1700s supported a vibrant farming community.

Today, most motorists driving alongside the stream are unaware that it’s a tributary of the Kennebec River and one of the most important wild Atlantic salmon spawning waters in the United States. Carson Hinkley, who lives near the stream in his family’s early 1800s homestead, is well-versed in the stream’s Atlantic salmon history. His great-great-grandmother, Carrie Wing Hinckley, documented the abundant salmon in her September 1834 diary: “The men caught four hundred salmon and trout during the weekend.”

In the early 1800s, boatloads of Kennebec River salmon were transported to markets in Boston, New York and Philadelphia. That ended abruptly in 1837 following the construction of Edwards Dam in Augusta. The 917-foot-wide, 24-foot-high behemoth blocked spawning salmon from reaching shallow gravel-bottom streams, including the one within view of Hinckley’s homestead 110 miles upriver.

Elsewhere in New England in the early 1800s, river pollution, dams and weir fishing at the mouths of rivers had decimated salmon runs. But when Maine became a state in 1820, the upper Kennebec River still teemed with so many spawning salmon, the Norridgewocks — a tribe of the Wabanaki Confederacy — annually harvested salmon with spears, traps, and bare hands.

Matt Scott, 89, of Belgrade is a retired state fisheries biologist who has studied Maine’s Atlantic salmon since 1962.

“Generations of Native Americans,” he told me, “caught hundreds of Kennebec salmon each year at the big eddy below Skowhegan’s Cataract Falls. It was known as the Great Gathering Place because it’s where salmon and Norridgewocks gathered in large numbers.”

In the Kennebec Valley, tales persist of settlers fertilizing crops with wheelbarrows of salmon.

According to explorer Capt. John Smith, salmon were abundant in nearly every river from Labrador to Connecticut. In 1616, he wrote, “On the western shores of the Atlantic, it (salmon) is found from Greenland to the Hudson, but is exceedingly rare in the latter river, and never penetrates farther south.”

Jennifer Noll, a biologist with the Maine Department of Marine Resources, releases an Atlantic salmon that was live-trapped and trucked upriver of the Lockwood Dam in Waterville. Ron Joseph photo

Today, Maine supports the only wild Atlantic salmon spawning runs in the United States. But even here, the “king of fish” is barely surviving as a federally endangered species. As of Aug. 26, 2024, 35 adult salmon had been live trapped at Waterville’s Lockwood Dam and transported upriver and released above four Kennebec River dams. (Since 2013, an annual average of 52 adult salmon have been live trapped at the Lockwood Dam.) Known as “trap and truck,” the salmon taxi service is the only viable method of ensuring that wild salmon continue to spawn in Perham Stream and the South Branch of the Sandy River, a major tributary of the Kennebec.

Among Maine’s few remaining salmon rivers — the Penobscot, Narraguagus and a handful of others — the Sandy River may offer the best hope of rebuilding wild salmon populations. The species’ future, though, hinges on its ability to reach critically important spawning habitat that remains blocked by four Kennebec dams — Lockwood and Hydro Kennebec Dams in Waterville, Shawmut Dam in Fairfield and Weston Dam in Skowhegan.

Last May, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission held public hearings in Waterville and Augusta to solicit comments about its relicensing of those four dams. Since FERC licenses are issued for 40 to 50 years, relicensing Brookfield Renewable’s dams represents a brief opportunity for the public to voice their concerns about salmon and other anadromous fishes. In March 2023, the National Marine Fisheries Service provided its written comments to FERC, concluding that building fishways at the four Kennebec dams “may adversely affect but are not likely to jeopardize the continued existence” of Atlantic salmon and short-nose sturgeon.

Brookfield Renewable’s four dams are shown, blocking salmon from reaching its spawning habitat. Map courtesy of Trout Unlimited

Most attendees spoke in favor of removing the four dams, reminding FERC that the 1999 removal of the Edwards Dam in Augusta triggered a remarkable sea-run fisheries restoration in the lower Kennebec River, which now supports the largest spawning alewife runs in the country. Sturgeon, shad, striped bass and salmon are now able to migrant unimpeded from the Atlantic Ocean to Waterville’s Lockwood Dam.

Recent Penobscot River dam removals have sparked the largest Atlantic salmon spawning runs in the country. On the Kennebec, though, it’s not as straightforward, according to Scott.

“I worked on the Kennebec River in the early 1960s,” he said, “when it was terribly polluted by mills and raw sewage. Now that the river is clean again, I agree that we need to provide salmon and other sea-run fish access to their historic spawning habitat. But I’m concerned that if the four dams are removed, invasive carp will move upriver of Lockwood Dam. They’re a real threat to native fisheries. Carp have wreaked havoc on the Great Lakes’ fisheries. We don’t want that to happen in the Kennebec, too.”

In the Great Lakes, fish monitors stationed at fishways permit passage of native fish while weeding out carp and sending them back downriver.

Since 2012, Jennifer Noll, an affable, highly dedicated salmon biologist with the Maine Department of Marine Resources, has worked to restore Kennebec salmon. Each year, she and a dozen volunteers plant hundreds of thousands of fertilized pink salmon eggs in the upper Kennebec’s tributaries.

“Atlantic salmon are at an inflection point,” Noll told me two years ago. “Dams, overfishing, warming oceans, pollution and other factors have driven our salmon population to perilously low numbers.”

The state’s salmon trap and truck program, operated in conjunction with Brookfield Renewable, is an emergency measure to aid spawning salmon.

“We’re essentially applying a life-support system,” Noll said, “to a critically ill wild salmon run until we figure out how to improve fish passage at the four dams between Waterville and Skowhegan.”

Biologists and volunteers augment salmon reproduction by annually depositing fertilized pink salmon eggs into artificial redds (salmon nests) excavated by a portable water pump. Ron Joseph photos

Although she and other dedicated Maine DMR salmon biologists have largely remained silent about the town of Phillips recent illegal dredging of the South Branch of the Sandy River, the destruction of thousands of salmon eggs and young is a distressing setback to salmon recovery efforts.

During the central Maine FERC hearings, the Atlantic Salmon Federation, Maine Rivers, Trout Unlimited, and the Natural Resources Council of Maine advocated for removal of the four dams. Salmon conservationists argue that Brookfield Energy’s contribution to the state’s electrical grid can be replaced by solar and wind power.

But Brookfield Renewable remains opposed to dam removal. The company claims it’s open to improving fish passage, but has not yet provided detailed plans.

Proposals advocated by dam removal proponents and opponents will be litigated in the years ahead.

Carson Hinkley remains hopeful, though, that he’ll live long enough to see wild salmon independently returning to Perham Stream. That possibility, though, will depend, in large part, on FERC’s relicensing decisions and the courts.

Ron Joseph of Sidney is author of “Bald Eagles, Bear Cubs, and Hermit Bill: Memories of a Maine Wildlife Biologist.” His column appears monthly.