The Habitat Stewardship program (HSP) project at the Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq (CMM) has been an important part of the conservation work that the organization has facilitated in an effort to help Atlantic Salmon populations in the Stewiacke River watershed. The project started in 2014 and has run for 10 years! Over the past decade, the project has completed important work focused on assessing and restoring the health of the watershed. Habitat assessments have been conducted to assess the suitability of the watercourse for salmon and trout habitat, with over 112 km of area assessed to date. In addition, over 350 culverts have been assessed to see if salmon and trout can pass through them. Remediation work has also been completed in an attempt to restore stream habitat to be more suitable for Salmon and Trout habitat. Debris has been removed from blocked culverts to allow fish to pass through them again. Trees have been planted in riparian zones to help improve shading and bank stabilization along riverbanks. Water temperature monitoring has taken place across the watershed, stream clean ups have removed hundreds of kilograms of garbage and many more activities have been completed to improve the health of the rivers within the Stewiacke River watershed.

The 2023-2024 field season was another busy year of work in the Stewiacke River watershed for the HSP crew, CMM crew and clean summer interns who worked all year to accomplish many important projects to help im ...