River Herring Co-Management
What is co-management?
What is co-management? Great question! There isn’t one definition, but in general co-management is a system where multiple entities (often governmental and otherwise) share information, responsibilities, roles, and resources in managing fisheries in a more flexible and adaptable way. With all of the different levels of management and groups that are involved and depend on river herring, they are a great example of where co-management can really work.
River herring monitoring and management is complex and requires an “all hands” approach for success.
Federal: Ultimately the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) is responsible for managing river herring throughout their range.
State: Different states have different socio-economic and environmental challenges and opportunities, and so there are opportunities for these states and their management entities to adapt their management based on those conditions.
Local: Coastal communities exist at the scale that river herring populations exist, and have the closest connections to these fish than any other group. With these connections come knowledge, capacity and the biggest incentives to get fisheries management right. Many of these communities have their own governmental entities and even long histories of management when it comes to river herring
Where the River Herring Network fits in:
There is no formal structure for co-management in river herring, but the network aims to provide a space where there is an equal playing field and where trust can be built in order for these relationships to exist. This relationship… that trust… and the conversations, decisions and products that come out of it all, is co-management.
Significance for Wabanaki
Rivers and river herring populations in Wabanaki homeland provided and still provide many sites of sustenance for Wabanaki tribal nations. These sites are sometimes referred to as life-giving places because they not only gathered food at these sites, but they were also places where families gathered, food was shared or traded, and where knowledge was transferred between generations. These sites constitute a way of life where sustenance and spirituality is intertwined through the relationship to place. These rhythms and these fish played, and still do play, essential roles in Wabanaki lifeways.
Colonial settlers recognized that Wabanaki and other tribal power came from their abilities to access these sites of sustenance. Colonization resulted in river herring and other species being regarded more as a resource to be used. And when Wabanaki people were actively displaced from these life-giving places, it was not long before river herring were affected by the development of early saw mills and dams and development that occurred to these rivers in the name of resource extraction.
Today, Wabanaki leadership continues to provide much of the direction behind river herring restoration and tribal governments play a significant role in restoration, management and in this network. That said, this interconnectedness between river herring and the tribes is not formally recognized in state or Federal policy when it comes to river herring management, despite the active roles they play in restoration and management efforts.
This section was written in partnership with Tony Sutton.
Community Leadership
It takes many people working at many scales to manage and monitor river herring. Below, meet a few people who play key roles in that collective work.
Bailey Bowden, Chair of Penobscot Alewife Committee: "Growing up in this small town, there really wasn’t anything to do other than play on the shoreline. As a kid, I would spend many hours dipping alewives into a bucket and running them around to the top of the dam and dumping them in the pond, and go back and get another dozen fish. My parents taught me to be conservation minded as a child – never take more than you need, always leave some for tomorrow. And this was just the beginning of that for the alewife harvest… When I started [in 2015] I didn’t know anyone other than the state that was interested in alewife. I thought I was the voice in the wilderness, all alone. I went to a meeting put on by the Downeast Fisheries Partnership, and there were probably 20 NGOs there all interested in this, and I realized I wasn’t alone. At lunchtime, they were actually coming to talk to me, which just blew me away, that they wanted to know what I knew… I can’t do it alone, you can’t do it alone… but if we can get more people and groups, that’s a bigger voice, and it’s amazing what can get done.”
Nate Gray, Maine Department of Marine Resources: “Partnerships are a way for us to keep a really good look at the resource in a particular region that folks are interested in restoration. Just the mere fact of me sitting here talking about this gives you some idea of how far we’ve come… People are starting to recognize how crucial this species is… The 400 plus generations of people who lived here prior to the European contact period were all gathering at the river for the same reason we gathered at the river when we showed up – for the quality of life here and for the resources that are available here. As species managers at the state level, that community involvement and understanding the health of the resource is critical to how we do our jobs. Without that we’re almost deaf to what the resource is doing. Without somebody paying attention, somebody counting, somebody getting scale samples, mailing scale samples in so we can read them. We need all that. Without it we are literally blind. Because there just aren’t enough of us to go into the field and get it all for all the different runs here in the state.”
Chris Johnson, Sipayik Environmental Department
"My role as ecology manager for the Passamaquoddy Tribe is to restore sea-run fish to the Passamaquoddy homelands, specifically concentrating on the Skutik watershed. We see river herring as a keystone species to revive other fisheries. There's a slew of species that we are trying to restore--American eel, shad, Atlantic salmon, alewife and blueback herring. We are really focusing on fish passage, and also doing counting studies, tracking studies, and assessments with federal engineers at a lot of areas in the watershed. We are trying to rebuild these ecosystems to allow native peoples to survive on the land that once provided for us, and just doesn't anymore. I'd like to see native peoples fish on the river again, because right now we can't do that. Tribal members here are trying to regain sustenance fishing rights, but that is not going to happen until there is recognition and cooperation. The proposed legislation to make changes to the tribal sovereignty bill would have really helped us. At the end of the day it is about survival, and in order to do that we need to make sure the ecosystem is healthy around us."