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April 24, 2007

Project Coordinator: Sandra Lary
sandra_lary@fws.gov 207-781-8364 x19

Nonesuch salt marsh restoration project completed

Nonesuch salt marsh This winter, Scarborough Marsh restoration partners completed their fifth major salt marsh restoration project in Scarborough Marsh Wildlife Management Area in four years. This most recent project promises to help restore the ecological health of the Nonesuch River, a 247-acre subwatershed of the 3,100-acre Scarborough Marsh. According to Wayne Munroe, District Conservationist for the USDA -Natural Resources Conservation Service, “The Nonesuch River salt marsh has been negatively impacted by old hayroads and man-made drainage ditches that cut across the marsh, starving the marsh of needed tidal waters.” In part because of the lack of tidal flow, multiple stands of non-native Phragmites have been invading sections of the Nonesuch River salt marsh.
For more information on Phragmites, view a Phragmites fact sheet at: http://www.fws.gov/northeast/gulfofmaine/publications/phragmites.htm

The Nonesuch River salt marsh restoration work included four main components:
1) breaching the old hayroads at strategic locations,
2) plugging ditches to improve hydrology and associated ecological functions on the marsh, 3) treating the Phragmites stands to minimize the threat of broad-scale invasion, and
4) conducting pre-restoration monitoring in 2005 and continuing with post-restoration monitoring through 2010.

“Scarborough Marsh Wildlife Management Area, owned and managed by Maine Dept. of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife is well-known as one of Maine’s premier salt marshes,. Our restoration partnership at Scarborough is all about repairing past environmental damage and re-establishing biological vitality for all of the fish and wildlife that depend on a naturally functioning salt marsh, “ commented Stewart Fefer, Project Leader at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (USFWS) Gulf of Maine Coastal Program. The USFWS-Gulf of Maine Coastal Program has played an active role in designing the restoration project, coordinating complex permit requirements with multiple agencies and NGO partners, raising funds, developing the monitoring protocol and selecting Northern Ecological Services, Inc. as environmental consultants to conduct monitoring. Natural Resources Conservation Service also provided a great deal of technical and engineering assistance, as well as the bulk of the funds to implement the work. Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife offered biological guidance, hired SWAMP, Inc. as the contractor to implement the restoration work, and provided oversight for the project. Friends of Scarborough Marsh, a locally-based coalition of private citizens and organizations dedicated to protecting, conserving, restoring and enhancing the Marsh and its watershed, played a pivotal role in coordinating the work of all partners.

According to CD Armstrong, the President of Friends of Scarborough Marsh, “Thanks to the financial, technical and biological support of all of our partners, this restoration project promises to hold marvelous benefits by controlling invasive species and
re-establishing high value natural habitat for fish and wildlife that frequent the marsh.”

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