In January of 2018, we were awarded $12,783.00 in grant funding from the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife to conduct stream restoration work at the 159-acre Dunham’s Brook Conservation Area, located at 1520 Main Road. Our 2009 land management plan for Dunham’s Brook Conservation Area had identified two culverts impeding fish passage under an old roadway that crosses Dunham’s Brook. A prior Division of Fisheries and Wildlife survey of Dunham’s Brook had found American Eel and Banded Killifish, and confirmed a breeding native brook trout population south of Main Road, which was originally documented in a 1990 survey.

Native sea-run brook trout, also known as Salters, spend much of their adult life in saltwater but return to freshwater to spawn. Considered a keystone species in the northeastern United States, Massachusetts populations of native brook trout have declined in recent years. Today, geographically isolated populations of trout remain in only about 10 percent of the sub-watersheds in eastern Massachusetts.