It could be close to the end of the century before the Atlantic salmon can be taken off the federal Endangered Species list. That’s one finding in a new federal recovery plan for the species that says as much as $24 million a year would need to be spent on hatcheries, habitat restoration and research to secure a self-sustaining wild population by then.
Peter Lamothe of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says recent dam removal projects that have resulted in a surge of river herring to state rivers could bode well for wild salmon, by providing a distraction for predators.
“So if you have a million river herring moving into the Penobscot in the spring, and you have 200,000 salmon smolts migrating out to the ocean, having that additional biomass in the river provides protection to those salmon, and so predation effects are reduced,” he says.
The new plan says to be removed from the endangered list, populations of at least 2,000 wild-spawned Atlantic salmon would need to show persistence in each of three watersheds: Merrymeeting Bay, Downeast Maine, and the Penobscot basin.