Maine’s Alewife Comeback Is the Atlantic Coast’s Only Success Story of Its Kind
Thirty-five years ago, fewer than 800 alewives made the annual spawning run up the Sebasticook River in Benton, Maine. Last year, 9 million did. The difference was a sustained, state-supported effort to remove dams and build fish passage infrastructure on Maine’s rivers.
9 million alewives counted in Maine’s Sebasticook River in 2025, up from fewer than 800 in the 1990s.
No other state on the Atlantic coast has matched this result. Alewives, also called river herring, migrate up to 100 miles inland from the Atlantic Ocean each summer to spawn. When dams block that passage, the fish vanish from river systems within a generation. Maine reversed that collapse by removing barriers and restoring the corridors the fish need.
The ecological stakes go beyond one species. Alewives act as what Rustin Taylor, executive director of Alewife Harvesters of Maine, calls a “biological conveyor belt,” moving nutrients between the ocean and inland waters. Seals, osprey, striped bass, and other species depend on them. When alewives disappear from a river system, the ripple effects travel up and down the food chain.
The recovery also carries direct economic and cultural weight for coastal communities. In Penobscot, a town of 1,100, the alewife festival is the biggest event of the year, according to Bailey Bowden, who leads the town’s alewife committee and is a ninth-generation resident. Commercial fishers now haul nets full of alewives below Benton Falls Dam each May. Those harvests were impossible when populations were near zero.
Dam removal is expensive and slow, but Maine’s results show it works at scale. The federal government’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law allocated $200 million for dam removal and fish passage projects nationwide, but those funds face pressure in the current congressional budget fight. Without continued investment, the infrastructure gains that rebuilt Maine’s fishery cannot be replicated in other Atlantic states.
The Atlantic coast historically supported tens of millions of river herring across dozens of river systems. Most of those populations have not recovered. Maine’s model exists. The question is whether federal and state governments fund it elsewhere before more fisheries collapse past the point of recovery.
What You Can Do Now
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Call your senators at (202) 224-3121 and tell them to protect dam removal funding in the federal budget. Ask them specifically to oppose any cuts to NOAA fisheries restoration programs or Army Corps of Engineers dam removal grants.
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Contact your House representative at (202) 225-3121 and ask them to co-sponsor the FISH Act, which authorizes dedicated funding for river herring recovery on the Atlantic coast. Name the bill directly.
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If you live in a state with unpassable dams, contact your state fish and wildlife agency. Ask what river herring passage projects are pending in your state and whether the agency has applied for federal dam removal grants. Find your state agency at fishwildlife.org/state-agencies.
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Submit a public comment to NOAA Fisheries supporting the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s river herring management plan. Comments can be submitted at regulations.gov by searching “ASMFC river herring.”
Sources
Mother Jones / Inside Climate News: Maine Alewife Population Grew from 800 to 9 Million via Dam Removal NOAA Fisheries: Bipartisan Infrastructure Law Funds Dam Removal and Fish Passage Nationwide Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission: River Herring Benchmark Stock Assessment American Rivers: Dam Removal Projects by State and Year NOAA Fisheries: River Herring Species Overview and Atlantic Coast Status
[Quote: “This is a right that towns have had forever. It was a pretty big slap in the face to lose the right to harvest this fish.”, Bailey Bowden, Penobscot alewife committee chair.
Inside Climate News]