Many years ago, Atlantic salmon were plentiful in the coastal rivers and north of the Hudson.

Then dams began to go up and within a few years, the population of Atlantic salmon had decreased sharply.

But in recent years, there's been an attempt to restore Atlantic salmon to the Penobscot River in Maine.

Stick around.

We'll see how that's going.

♪ Welcome to Windows to the Wild.

I'm Willem Lange.

We're in Old Town, Maine, on the Penobscot River.

It’s named for the Penobscot Indian Nation that's lived along its shores for oh, thousands of years.

Well, over time, the health of the rivers suffered the effects of industry and dams.

But that's slowly changing.

To help tell the story, a group of adventurers recently came down part of the river on paddle boards.

Joe Klementovich, one of the paddlers, is normally on our production crew.

He’s also a photographer.

Now, Joe, why come down the river, first of all, on paddle boards?

Well, I know you like canoes, but I don't know.

We've, My friend Mike and I, have done a fair bit of adventure exploring with paddle boards.

A year before this trip we did a trip on the Saco River on paddle boards and it was a great time.

It's a great way to explore a watershed.

So why the Penobscot?

Oh man, there's so many good stories and so many interesting layers in the Penobscot and the idea of following some of the travels that the salmon make.

Right.

So we we didn't go uphill.

We didn't go up river.

We, we decided to start up in the headwaters and, follow our way down to the Penobscot.

But what was the purpose?

What were you doing the trip for?

A few winters ago, I heard stories of salmon making their way back up into the tributaries, of the Penobscot and Mike, who was on trip on the Saco, him and I talked and we decided it might be kind of fun to follow their outward migration.

Now, you're normally with the crew, you're on the back side of the camera.

This time, I presume you were partly at least on the other side, right?

Just, just passed Brownville Junction.

We're on the main stem of the Pleasant right now.

Yeah, a lot of, a lot of filming other folks, you know, other members of our crew or our our our paddling crew.

And we're going to get a look at it?

We'll get a look at that and some good stories and some long, rainy stretches too.

I can't wait to see it.

Yeah.

♪ Joe is traveling on the river with friends.

Mike Morin and his wife, Amanda, are seasoned paddleboard ♪ The Davidson family rafted on the Colorado River with Joe about a year ago.

♪ They're ready to navigate this river on paddleboards.

My name is Sarah Davidson.

I am a teacher in North Conway and so when Joe mentioned this trip, I was all onboard.

Spent the last 20 years guiding on the Penobscot River.

From the far north reaches from Ripogenus Dam down.

And so when Joe said that he was interested in paddling parts of the Penobscot Lower and exploring the watershed.

I totally jumped on board and brought my two children along as well, Myles and Addie, who love adventuring.

We're up off the Katahdin Ironworks Road, about to hike into the Middle Fork of the Pleasant River to the confluence of Holmes Brook.

Where Trout Unlimited and the Appalachian Mountain Club have been doing some brook trout restoration work, on Holmes Brook.

So we're going to check that out and then launch from that point and head down and we intersect with the bridge across the river where we spent the night last night and get the rest of our gear and embark on the rest of our journey.

♪ The team beats its way through thick underbrush on its way to the river.

♪ Clouds of black flies and mosquitoes kind of keep them moving.

♪ The sound of rushing water means they made it to the junction of Holmes Brook and the middle branch of Pleasant River.

♪ This is where their paddleboards come to life.

♪ Miles, did you put your fin on?

Yeah, you want to show me how to do it?

♪ This is a little tributary, Holmes Brook.

And so a bunch of organizations like Trout Unlimited, Appalachian Mountain Club, the Nature Conservancy.

There's probably a few more in there.

Get funding to send folks in here to basically cut trees down to replicate kind of the natural cycle of these streams.

So then it just backs up, creates pools, and then creates habitat for eastern.

So our native eastern brook trout.

So I bet if we got a rod and we fished over here, we could find a bunch more brook trout up in these pools.

And then ideally with the Atlantic salmon coming back into these spawning tributaries, this will provide habitat for the little fish, the fry, the fingerlings, and then eventually they head downstream like we're going to and go to the ocean.

Yeah.

I'm excited to get on there on the middle fork of the pleasant here and start heading downstream.

(WATER RUSHING) Yeah.

Sarah.

We're on the middle branch of the Pleasant River right now.

Just started maybe a half a mile in.

It’s bony, but thankfully we have a lot of water today.

Like a lot of water.

This would be a lot of walking if we didn't.

(WATER RUSHING) Now, to get ready for this trip did you carry everything on paddleboards?

Right?

Yep.

Yeah, so it would just be like, similar to a backpacking trip, like you've done a million times, right?

You carry everything that you're that you need.

A bit damper than backpacking.

Yeah, but you’ve got a dry bag and a paddle board.

I don't know how much you had on your paddleboard, but I feel like, probably 40 pounds of stuff in dry bags and strapped down and they're they're a great way to travel through the.

Yeah, I see that.

I can't do it because I can't I can't even stand up in own living room without a cane.

Well, a lot of times we were sitting on them.

Like, when you just, you know, you can sit on them and kneel and stand and move around a fair bit.

You know, like you could in a canoe.

Yeah.

♪ The Penobscot River, along with its south and west branches, runs 264 miles.

The basin alone covers about 8,600 mi .

That's a lot of water and a lot of power.

Prior to 1830s, the river was dam free and Atlantic salmon were plentiful.

That's when industry saw the river's potential and dams went up.

♪ Now there's an effort to restore the Penobscot.

Two dams have been removed since 2012.

About 119 still stand on the river basin.

♪ Why are free flowing rivers important for more than aesthetic reasons?

Well, Mike's got a great head for the dates.

So what?

When were the dates?

When was the Veazie Dam taken out?

2012.

And I believed with the.

I should probably check that.

See, I blew it.

I said he's got a good mind for this and that put him on the spot.

Yeah.

About 12 or 2013 dam removal started occurring for the Veazie and Great Works dam projects.

And?

And, boy, the Maine Department of Fisheries, I don't know if that's the official title, but basically they've been monitoring fish passage at the Milford Dam and they've got really accurate counts of all sorts of different species.

And since 2012 or 13, one example of a fish coming and really making a great comeback is the, river herring.

It went from like almost nothing before 2010 to last year.

This previous, like just last year, the count was up to five and a half a million fish coming up to that dam.

Wow.

So a free flowing river, obviously for, you know, clean water and just the natural fish passage is a huge benefit.

I have a vision of a guy in the viewing chamber with the counter going, Yeah.

Seven million.

And the the Atlantic salmon are making a comeback as well.

This year's, I think final count this as of October 30th was, 1,663.

That's amazing.

I can recall when they were under 100.

Yeah.

Yeah, and that was in the late, I think the late 80s.

♪ The Great Works Dam once stretched across the Penobscot at Old Town, Maine.

In 2012, it came down.

Five, four, three, two, one.

Go!

The removal was part of the Penobscot Restoration Project.

♪ Now, Mike, you lived here before the dam was torn torn out?

Yeah, I grew up, in Bradley.

Just down river, across the river from Old Town.

Spent my entire youth really on the river fishing and paddling and spent a lot of time around the dams, particularly Great Works Dam, because it was right there in town.

It spanned the ri between Old Town and Bradley and so, yeah, it's, definitely it was a part of my life growing up.

Big change?

Yeah and it's a it's a really welcome change.

As a kid, I used to spend time around the dam, and I remember being around the age of ten or so and just just pondering what the river must look like or would look like with the dam removed.

And really, just from a curiosity perspective, wondering that that sense of wonder was like, what?

What does the river look like without the dam?

And, and certainly, you know, later on in life, you know, started to think more about the ecological benefits of having, the dam not in place.

And so it's pretty, pretty, pretty cool to come back and see the river free flowing in its natural state.

Yeah.

And kind of have that kind of curiosity kind of that question kind of answered and then we also realize the benefits of that.

♪ Tearing down the Great Works Dam, opened the stretch of the Penobscot River where sea run fish, like Atlanti salmon, haven't run for more than a century.

It helps bring back eagles and ospreys too.

♪ Well done.

Woo.

What's going to happen in the river now?

Is it going to keep on getting better?

Are the dams going to come down or what?

What do you think?

Yeah, there's there’s projects going on, you know, each each year or every several years, dams need to get re-licensed and when people speak out and, you know, public comment is open and people show that, you know, they prefer not to have dams, then, you know, things change.

And, you know, we're here on Indian Island, home of the Penobscot Nation and they were a key, key group to get all of these dams removed.

Really?

That’s great.

They led the charge and really made this all of this Penobscot restoration happen.

♪ Penobscot Nation was one of seven partners, you know, non-governmental organizations, government, both state and federal organizations.

James Francis is the Penobscot Nations tribal historian.

He grew up along the river.

Yeah, when I was growing up it was one of the things I always want to know what the river looked like without the dams.

For us, it wasn't about, you know, bringing the fisheries back.

You know, for us, it was rooted in culture and this river is the heart of our culture.

And to have it free flowing and behaving the way it's always behaved at its own will, that is amazing.

You know, we talk about salmon coming back and river herring and there are there are groups working in the upper watershed to actually put in salmon fry, up in those headwaters.

And then hopefully kind of bolster that, that cycle of salmon coming back.

That would be so great.

That's so great.

(WATER RUSHING) This river was created and, you know, those salmon were a major part of that and it allowed our ancestors to make a deal with those fish for sustenance, to be able to harvest them and to honor them and the fact that they were blocked off for so long was an injustice to this river.

And so them coming back, it's reinvigorating that that sense of place, that indigenous sense of place, because it's, just like we they're indigenous to here.

♪ There are relatives like we see the fish and the other animals as our relatives.

Jennifer Neptune is a Penobscot artist, writer and conservator of indigenous culture.

As strong as that salmon culture is on the West Coast, it was equally as strong here.

And it's sad that, you know, in the United States, Maine is the only place where we have wild Atlantic salmon and it's all from human activity and dams, you know, why they aren't in the rivers that they belong to.

And so I think there's something really powerful in in bringing them back and helping them to return.

They have such an amazing, like, life cycle and how far they travel, you know, they travel all the way off the coast to Greenland.

And to be shunned away by these concrete structures, it makes their return that much sweeter.

Their returning home.

This is the place where you, know, they belong.

You know, there’s places in this river you paddle through that are perfect for spawning.

And so, you know, they're coming back.

♪ We are here on the Middle Fork of the pleasant River.

Just got done paddling from Holmes Brook.

The rivers that Joe and his team have paddled so far are tributaries of the Penobscot Before dams went up, Atlantic salmon and other fish species made their way this far up the watershed.

So it's all connected, the upper watershed, the tributaries like Holmes Brook and this river here down into the Piscataquis and then down into the Penobscot.

So it's kind of interesting for us to paddle where these Atlantic salmon would be migrating from the ocean up into these tributaries if there were no dams at all here, right now there'd be Atlantic salmon in the waters underneath us.

Good?

All right, off to the Penobscot.

Looks like last day.

Here we are on the Penobscot.

Late start.

Nice day.

A little overcast heading downstream.

♪ From here, the team's goal is to reach the section of river where the Great Works Dam once stood.

♪ There you go.

Right on.

♪ It's raining.

♪ Heavy rainfall and high water levels make paddling a real challenge.

♪ They decide to put ashore.

Oh, yeah.

Nice work.

They missed their end target by just a mile or so, but each of them accomplishes a goal.

Nice job, guys.

Thank you.

You too, Joe.

Wow.

So Mike and I have talked about next trip.

Would you have any input on what you'd like to do next?

Something maybe just a different time of year.

With the bugs.

The portaging was a challenge, so I'd say the portaging was tricky.

I think I would pack less next time depending on the portage situation.

But, I really like the remote feeling of this trip.

Hi, I'm Addie Davidson.

I am 11 years old.

I have been rafting and on the river since I was really little, but this stand up paddle boarding was a really new, exciting challenge for me because I've never done it befor It was really fun.

My highlights were probably getting to explore the new parts of the river and, the windy watershed in the beginning.

Hi, my name is Miles Davidson.

I'm 13 years old.

One of my highlights for the trip was seeing all the different tributaries to the water.

One was like very narrow, it got some whitewater, and now you have a really big river.

And it’s cool how you can can see how it grows.

You know, it was kind of a rough night.

The mosquitoes were pretty rugged the first day and we got into this camp where it was just, we were just getting inundated.

I'd never it’s been a long time I’ve experienced mosquitoes like that.

And I think morale was a little bit low even in the morning, as we were still getting kind of eaten alive by mosquitoes as we were hastily making our breakfasts.

All of a sudden, there’s a mosquito on your butt and you’re shocked.

But as soon as we got on the water, it's like, attitudes changed immediately.

Point that thing downhill.

Keep it going.

Keep.

Yeah.

♪ Then there's more.

Amanda for the win.

Thank you.

For the reveal?

Let’s hear it for Amanda.

I want to say a big thanks to James Francis, who picked us up from Penobscot Nation on his Saturday, I guess.

Yeah, Saturday, middle of the day.

We called him for a ride because our portage, was a lot more than we could chew off.

And now we're just sitting by the road.

Yeah, I think they’re horse flies.

The car ride was really interesting because he's he has such a deep understanding of the place and the the role that people have with nature and how we connect to these rivers and the Penobscot River is his home and it's really, really important for us to understand, like, his perspective.

To see those dams removed opened up a section of the the river to how our ancestors saw it.

And one of the first things a bunch of us did was jump in our canoes and go down through that whitewater, you know.

And shortly after that, we hosted a a canoe race.

♪ It's opened up not just for the salmon, but for recreation.

And, you know, to have this being a part of our culture flowing again is, you know, invigorating and it's great to be on it on the river.

♪ And looking forward, hopefully there's more people experiencing these rivers because when you experience these rivers, you really start to better understand them and and really start to feel like the importance of these rivers and and the fish that live in them and the people that recreate on them and people that live beside them.

Yeah.

It just feels good to be part of this river system for a few days.

I can't think of anything more to say other than, god, the bugs Yeah.

♪ And that's where the story ends.

I'm Willem Lange.

I'll see you again on Windows to the Wild.

♪ Support for the production of Windows to the Wild is provided by the Alice J. Reen Charitable Trust, Bailey Charitable Foundation, the Fuller Foundation, Road Scholar and viewers like you.

Thank you.

Make a gift to the wild and support the Willem Lange Endowment Fund, established by a friend of New Hampshire PBS.

To learn how you can keep environmental, nature and outdoor programing possible for years to come, call our development team at (603) 868-4467.

♪ There are a lot of deer flies here, a lot.

♪