One Herring in Ten Minutes

I am always in awe, especially as I have just driven part of the course, driven, not walked, that this fish has not only found its way up the Woonasquatucket, not the Moshassuck, at the confluence at Citizens’ Bank/ RISD downtown, but into the Providence River, not the Blackstone. And before that its school swam from offshore Virginia – Maryland, up the coast and into Narragansett Bay, swam from Pt. Judith… Continue reading

Back to Schools: Restoring fish populations to the Pawtuxet River

For 200 years or longer, dams have blocked a number of important species of anadromous fish from completing their lifecycle.

Alewife, blueback herring, and American shad are just a few of the anadromous species that live their adult life in saltwater but return to freshwater to spawn and whose populations had virtually disappeared from the Pawtuxet River watershed following the Industrial Revolution. Continue reading

We Count on our Buckies: River Herring Migration 1981-2019

Phil Edwards, Supervising Fisheries Biologist with the RI Department of Environmental Management Division of Fish and Wildlife, has been counting the migrating fish for years at Gilbert Stuart stream (the headwaters of Narrow River) and other locations around the state. The attached chart for Gilbert Stuart Stream shows a steady decline in the population due to overfishing from 2001 until a moratorium was declared in 2006. Continue reading

What is the Narrow River Watershed Plan all about?

The Narrow River Watershed has long been recognized as a special place. It holds important resources for the State and for the local communities, including scenic beauty, the estuary, wetlands, a drinking water source, historic and cultural resources along the rivers, a National Wildlife Refuge, and opportunities for water-based recreation, including fishing, shellfishing (currently banned), and swimming. Continue reading

Next Meeting

The Rhode Island Rivers Council will be holding it’s October meeting in-person and “virtually” via Zoom on Wed., Oct. 9 at 3:30pm. See the agenda for details. For information on past meetings see the Meetings and Presentations page. Continue reading