Posted on March 27, 2023
Pools of water glint in the thin winter light at the Old Pond salt marsh, a refuge for shorebirds and a travel way for fish, clams and lobsters, along with smaller aquatic life.
But that pooling water signals a dying marsh.
“It’s like an overwatered house plant,” Maine Coast Heritage Trust (MCHT) conservation planner Jeremy Gabrielson said. “Over time, the roots of the plants can’t handle it and they die off. It forms these pools … That’s exactly what we don’t want to see because those pools are not capturing mud and sediment and other things to help the marsh grow.”
Salt marshes, like many other pieces of the natural and human-made environment, are changing as the sea level rises.
“I think the biggest challenge is that we’re racing the clock,” Gabrielson said. “We’re seeing the impact of sea level rise on marshes around the state.”
MCHT has started the Marshes for Tomorrow Initiative to restore seven marshes across the state, with funding help from an anonymous $950,000 gift given last year.
In practice, this means draining the water from the pools so the plants can regrow. Gabrielson said this is the least invasive way to start bringing a salt marsh back to health. The plants allow mud and sediment to settle and build up the marsh as the sea level rises, trapping carbon dioxide at a rate 10 times of the amount Maine trees store.
“The plants will do the work for us if we give them a chance,” he said.
A marsh surrounded by upland, like the one at Old Pond, is ideal for restoration because as it rises, the marsh has somewhere to migrate to. Staff, volunteers and professional salt marsh restorers descended on the marsh last June to begin planning, funded by a Maine Natural Resource Conservation Program grant.
“The Old Pond project is one of the first restoration projects like this in Maine,” Gabrielson said.
Last week, MCHT regional steward Tatia Bauer stood at the edge of the salt marsh in muck boots, surveying the work ahead.
The project has been delayed, she noted, because all the recent rain and snow have left the marsh too waterlogged to hold an excavator.
“We’ll bring out shovels and five or 10 people and do the basics to drain these pools,” she said.
Three salt marshes along the Machias River are the focus of a Downeast Salmon Federation (DSF) restoration project. One, the Schoppee Salt Marsh in Machias, had lost 2 feet of elevation, Associate Director Charlie Foster said.
These large pools of water must be drained to begin restoring the Old Pond salt marsh in Hancock.
A $1.8 million grant DSF received in late December 2022 from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s Coastal Resilience Fund will help restore the Schoppee Salt Marsh, one in Addison and one near Middle River in Machias that Foster said is entirely blocked.
Agricultural embankments built up 100 years ago and degraded culverts also hasten the poor health of salt marshes, Foster said, by interrupting the water’s natural flow.
So, for the Middle River project, the Maine Department of Transportation is involved. Other partners, from the state Department of Environmental Conservation to neighboring land trusts, like MCHT, contribute, he said.
And, he noted, it’s not a huge reach for an organization dedicated to protecting salmon dip into salt marsh restoration.
“The Middle River is a tributary to Machias,” Foster said, “which is a critical habitat for endangered salmon … [This] is an ecosystem-based approach to salmon restoration. The whole river system is important.”
