I’d like to change the name of a Commonwealth agency. What would you think about the Massachusetts Division of “Manufactured” Fisheries and Wildlife? I think it would offer a much better picture of the agency’s focus, particularly here in the Connecticut Valley.
Here you can get daily online information on where to find truckloads of thousands-upon-thousands of factory-produced rainbow, brown and brook trout before they are dumped into local rivers for hatchery-fish angling pleasure. But I dare you to find anything more than a several-weeks-old tally of the numbers of wild migratory fish streaming north here on the Connecticut River anywhere beyond the fish windows at Holyoke Dam. So this would be a “truth-in-labeling” adjustment.
New England’s Great River runs for 69 miles through the Commonwealth. The state Division of Fisheries & Wildlife is responsible for all migratory fish in that broad reach from the time they enter at Agawam, until they either remain here for spawning, or pass into Vermont and New Hampshire. Those runs are the agency’s “public trust”— to be protected for its citizens, anglers, students and future generations. But the less information the public gets on their whereabouts, the less an agency might be availed upon to actually protect them.
As we enter the final weeks of migration season, the only information provided — not just days old, but nearly a month stale, refers solely to fish on the first 16 miles of river from the Connecticut border to the fish lift at Holyoke Dam. That leaves a full 52 miles of river with just a single — now uselessly outdated — May 4 report about the truly wild shad, lamprey and herring now moving along New England’s flagship waterway. Salmon are not mentioned here because just three years after the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service stopped factory production of this hybrid, just a single salmon has been tallied. Hatchery fish production masks the reality of failing wild populations and deteriorating habitats. To date there’s been but one report on fish passage from Turners Falls.
As an interested citizen I’m a bit outraged that it’s June, and I don’t have a clue about what’s going on with the wild, migrating fish coming upriver in what you have to consider as one of New England’s last remaining great migrations. Shad, blueback herring and sea lamprey have been moving upstream for over two months now, and the only public information offered is of the absurd 54 shad counted at Turners Falls, almost a full month back. Really? This is any agency with an accountability problem.
Fisheries & Wildlife has scant little to offer the public as to what they’ve been doing on the ground to protect our wild fish runs — and that includes struggling populations of state-listed, endangered shortnose sturgeon, also under their purview. But to not even take responsibility for having on-the-ground personnel monitoring runs at the river’s long-known choke point, Turners Falls, is a flagrant abdication of duty.
Here in central and northern Massachusetts we not only don’t see fish because of decimated Connecticut River habitats, but we aren’t offered updated tallies on the ugly mess. But perhaps that’s by design. Connecticut’s state fisheries agency regularly provides more information on Commonwealth fish runs than does Massachusetts.
When I recently contacted the Commonwealth’s Anadromous Fish Project leader to inquire about fish passage information at Turners Falls, he tersely emailed back that the state no longer does those fish counts and I should contact FirstLight Power for information. I guess our fish are now fully privatized. And when it has come to the power company requesting larger and more frequent water withdrawals on the Connecticut upstream at the Northfield Mountain Pumped Storage Station, it appears the Fisheries & Wildlife has never seen a company proposal it wasn’t just fine with.
This 2016 season has literally been the worst year for Massachusetts fish passage information since 2010, when FirstLight’s Northfield Mountain broke down, fouling its pumping tunnels with 45,000 cubic square yards of reservoir muck. They didn’t operate from May to November and fish passage at Turners Falls, it was subsequently revealed, had jumped 600 to 800 percent above yearly averages.
We didn’t get that information until late as well. Seem a little fishy to you?
Some of us actually care about wild fish and living rivers. And, frankly, if I were reduced to thinking that following a truckload of factory fish to its dumping site for a day’s angling was a wildlife experience, well, I’d just as soon get one of those wind-up fish carousels you can hold, the ones with the tiny plastic pole and the revolving, yapping fish mouths.
The Massachusetts Division of “Manufactured” Fish & Wildlife — sounds about right where wild fish and the Connecticut River is concerned.
Karl Meyer of Greenfield is a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists.