A study to evaluate the effect of adding large woody debris (more commonly known as trees) to headwaters of the Sunday River has grown to a major brook trout research effort thanks to the involvement of Dr. Stephen Coghlan of the University of Maine. The original study, funded through the Eastern Brook Trout Joint Venture, involved restoring wood to two tributaries of the Upper Sunday River in extreme western Maine and monitoring the results, which are expected to moderate flows and improve brook trout habitat by creating pools and adding organic matter (notably by trapping leaves) to increase the abundance of macroinbertebrates (aquatic insects), a major food source for brookies.

Enter Dr. Coghlan and his crew, including graduate student Paul Damkot. They are not only helping to monitor the existing project, but have expanded it to determine the role of brook trout as macroinvertebrate predators. They are in the process of sampling streams both with and without brook trout, and have plans to introduce brook trout into fishless reaches to monitor resultant changes to the macroinvertebrate population.

To return to the original project, Maine streams (as well as many streams nationally) are thought to be devoid of naturally occuring wood, which was removed to facilitate log/pulpwood drives and hasn't really reoccurred naturally since log driving days because of cutting near the shores of streams. We found several log-driving dams on the Sunday, even high in the headwater streams, supporting this notion.

Jay Milot, who works in the White Mountain National Forest, has had good results from adding trees to a number of streams, and did the work on the Sunday River. We have a similar project on the headwaters of Bemis Stream, a tributary to Mooselookmeguntic Lake, which is also being monitored.