BANGOR DAILY NEWS • April 30, 2022
For more than 35 years, Atlantic Salmon for Northern Maine has raised salmon eggs at a hatchery near Ashland and released tiny fry — baby fish — into the Aroostook River. Until about a century ago, the Aroostook and other Maine rivers teemed with the fish before pollution, hydroelectric dams and land use changes cut off their natural sea routes and disrupted their reproductive cycles. Salmon restoration efforts are ongoing statewide. But in Aroostook County, Atlantic Salmon for Northern Maine has hope for success thanks to international cooperation and a new plan. One of its most important partners is New Brunswick’s St. John River Basin Salmon Recovery Inc., which has provided St. John River eggs to the Sheridan hatchery each year since it opened. The relationship is central to the group’s work.