News & Announcements
Download media package for this story including text in Word format plus high-resolution image (108K self-extracting Zip file)
March 23, 2006
Project Coordinator Contact:
Stewart Fefer
(stewart_fefer@fws.gov;
207-781-8364 x17)
Cobscook Falls Coastal Wetland Grant Finalized
Four Cobscook Falls properties in Cobscook Bay, totaling 225.4 acres, were finally and permanently protected this month with a National Coastal Wetland Conservation Act grant. The properties will be owned and managed by Quoddy Regional Land Trust, with a reverter clause to Maine Dept. of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. Gulf of Maine Coastal Program worked closely with multiple partners to finalize the proposal concept, and Gulf of Maine Coastal Program remained fully involved by providing and interpreting biological data, writing the grant proposal, creating maps and calculating wetland acreages, coordinating a site visit, and working behind-the-scenes with partners to keep the project on track for the past two years. Dan Leahy, Regional Federal Aid Coordinator, as well as staff at Maine Coast Heritage Trust, Quoddy Region Land Trust, Maine Dept. of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, and the generous and committed landowner all deserve tremendous credit in achieving this important conservation success.
Cobscook Bay is widely recognized as the premier coastal wildlife concentration site in the northerastern United States, with international significance from the perspective of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and conservation partners for its relatively undisturbed, species-rich marine and intertidal ecosystems. The Bay’s extensive and unspoiled shoreline, with sheltered coves, extensive low-tide mudflats, fringing salt marshes, rocky intertidal zone and subtidal eelgrass beds offer critical habitat for hundreds of thousands of migrating shorebirds, a diverse and abundant assemblage of wintering and migrating waterfowl, bald eagles and diadromous fish, including federally listed Atlantic salmon attracted the Denny’s River, as well as smelt, alewife, shad, sea-run brook trout, striped bass and American eel.
The Cobscook Bay region is seeing intensifying pressure and rapidly escalating prices as potential summer home owners and retirees look beyond the crowded and expensive shoreline to the south. Therefore, protecting the Cobscook Falls property, in the heart of the Bay, is of vital importance in protecting high value habitat before it is forever lost to development.