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NOAA ANNOUNCES NORTHEAST
HABITAT RESTORATION GRANTS FOR 2000
NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service
awarded $270,500 worth of grants for eight community level habitat
restoration projects designed to improve a variety of marine
habitats important to fisheries in the Northeast.
"Every year since 1996 NOAA
Fisheries has been able to maximize the impact of its Community-Based
Restoration Program funding by partnering with local organizations
and state agencies across the nation. These public-private partnerships
are essential to our mission, and the communities that get behind
them are some of our most important allies in the restoration
of marine habitats," said NOAA Fisheries Director Penny
Dalton.
The grants were awarded directly through
NOAA Fisheries' Community-Based Restoration Program. Staff from
the NOAA Restoration Center, NOAA Fisheries Science Centers and
regional staff work closely with communities to aid in project
development and implementation. In turn, the projects are monitored
and maintained by communities, promoting stewardship and a heightened
appreciation for the environment and its well-being.
Massachusetts
- NOAA awarded a $15,000 grant to the A.D.
Makepeace Company in Plymouth County. The goal of the project
is to replace a non-functioning wooden fishway with an Alaskan
steep-pass fishway. This will restore alewife and blueback herring
in the upper Agawam River by opening up over 200 acres of high
quality spawning and nursery habitat.
New
Hampshire
- NOAA awarded a $30,000 grant to the Town
of Rye Conservation Commission in Rye. The project, which is
part of a larger Awcomin Marsh ecosystem restoration effort,
will focus on restoring natural elevations to the marsh, creating
transitional zones between marsh and upland habitats and the
removal of the invasive plant Phragmites.
- NOAA awarded a $55,000 grant to the University
of New Hampshire's Jackson Estuarine Laboratory in Strafford
County. This project will produce a manual that will provide
citizens and resource managers with a simplified restoration
method and the information needed to undertake a successful eelgrass
restoration effort, from site selection through post-transplant
monitoring. The manual will be used as an instructional tool
to transfer habitat restoration techniques to the public.
- NOAA awarded a $50,000 grant to the University
of New Hampshire's Jackson Estuarine Laboratory in Strafford
County. This project will rejuvenate the South Mill Pond ecosystem
by restoring shellfish and salt marsh at two sites. South Mill
Pond is an urbanized salt pond located within the Great Bay Estuary
in Portsmouth.
Connecticut
- NOAA awarded a $10,850 grant to the Connecticut
Department of Environmental Protection to work with The Nature
Conservancy's Connecticut Chapter and other project partners
to control water chestnut in the Connecticut and Hockanum Rivers
in Hartford County. Water chestnut poses a major threat to 36
miles of tidal Connecticut River that supports one of the largest
and most stable populations of American shad in the U.S., and
may impact an area that contains one of the least disturbed large-river
tidal marsh systems in the Northeast.
New
York
NOAA awarded a $50,000 grant to The Nature Conservancy's Orange
County Chapter. This project will result in the removal of the
Cuddebackville Dam on the Neversink River. The removal will open
up 40 miles of the river's mainstem and countless tributaries
to many species including American shad, hickory shad, striped
bass and American eel. It also will benefit the population of
an endangered freshwater mussel species that lives in the river.
- NOAA awarded a $24,912 grant to the Town
of North Hempstead. The town will be implementing a tidal wetlands
restoration project in a degraded 1.5 acre tidal cove on the
western shoreline of Hempstead Harbor. The goal of the project
is to return the degraded lagoon from an open water habitat back
into an emergent marsh.
Virginia
- NOAA awarded a $34,710 grant to the Virginia
Marine Resources Commission in Norfolk. This project will build
on pilot efforts to restore oyster populations in the Back River,
adjacent to Langley Air Force Base by creating three-dimensional
reefs and maintaining them as an oyster sanctuary.
The NOAA Community-Based Restoration Program
has been working with community organizations since 1996 to support
effective habitat restoration projects in marine, estuarine and
riparian areas across the nation. To date, 166 projects in 24
states have been implemented using NOAA funding and leveraged
funding from five major restoration partners, including the American Sportfishing Association's
FishAmerica
Foundation, Restore America's
Estuaries, the Five
Star Restoration Challenge Grant Program, the National
Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the National
Fisheries Institute.
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