A Falmouth man was recently honored by a national conservation group for spending fifty years restoring the Quashnet River.
Francis Smith recently won the Ray Mortensen Award, the highest honor given to volunteers of Trout Unlimited.
Smith led efforts to restore the Quashnet, which runs through Mashpee and Falmouth, after it was turned into a cranberry bog, then abandoned.
Smith has been volunteering for the project since the 1970's. He said preserving the land from development was the hardest part. And the work has been a joy:
“The restoration was easy, it was fun! And it took on a life of its own. Everybody who’s participated in this thing has, I think, thoroughly enjoyed being down there fixing this river. They just keep coming back and they don’t stop coming back. They want to make it better.”
After decades of work, the river has seen huge growth in its brook trout population.
Some of the fish are tagged by the state for research, with antennae along the river that track them.
Smith said it works the same as an EZ-Pass.
“It’s nothing more than that. You have the same thing in your automobile. And once the tag is excited, it sends back a 10-digit number. That 10-digit number was previously recorded when the fish was tagged.”
The Quashnet is now a sea-run brook trout stream. People can fish there, it’s designated as catch-and-release.
Smith will be working with Americorps volunteers this fall to improve the habitat at the stream.