NEW YORK TIMES • March 29, 2026
For 20 years, Paul Christman has been working to restore salmon to the Sandy River watershed in the western Maine mountains, where they were eradicated after dams built in the 1800s blocked their passage. The strategy is producing thousands of juvenile salmon that migrate to the North Atlantic, but just a handful that return to Maine to spawn as adults. Now, a $300 million project to remove or modify four dams downstream on the Kennebec River is infusing the work with new hope, possibly clearing the way for salmon to swim freely up to the Sandy River within a decade.