MAINE WILDERNESS WATERSHED TRUST INC DBA PIERCE POND WATERSHED TRUST

Stewardship:MWWT hired a summer intern once again, via collaborations with Maine Coast Heritage Trust and Somerset Woods Trustees that offset a large portion of the costs. The intern assisted with trail maintenance and water-quality monitoring.Owing to serious damage from severe storms, a number of bridges and culverts on the Lindsay Cove roadwhich provides the main public access to Pierce Pondrequired extensive repairs. MWWT contributed $2,000 to the cost of those repairs, in line with its mission to ensure public access to the pond.MWWT conducted water quality testing in Pierce Pond in 2025, taking clarity, dissolved oxygen, and temperature readings, using buoys with temperature loggers at specified depths. The effort provided excellent baseline data allowing future responses to changes or detrimental developments. The Trust also laid plans to conduct a brook-trout telemetry study in 2026 in partnership with Maine Inland Fisheries & Wildlife, as well as a water-quality and fisheries study in Kilgore, King, and Grass Ponds in partnership with the University of Maine at Farmington.

Education/Outreach: 2025 was a regrouping and planning year for MWWTs efforts at educational programming, which is intended to attract new, younger outdoor enthusiasts to the watershed to support its conservation. The focus has been refined to developing collaborations with college outing clubs and organizations such as Chewonki and Camp Kieve that provide programs for high school students. Efforts to establish such partnerships will continue.MWWT's Annual Members Meeting and Banquet, which was held on April 5, 2025, serves to educate members about issues in the Pierce Pond watershed and MWWTs initiatives to address them. In 2025 the banquets featured speaker was Elizabeth Latti, Director of the Fisheries & Hatcheries Division of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife. Latti was previously the Fisheries Biologist for Pierce Pond and knows the watershed well. In her engaging and informative presentation she discussed the state of the wild brook trout population in the watershed, always a topic of keen interest to Pierce Ponders. She also explained the effect that the stocking of hatchery-raised fish can have, by reducing fishing pressure on wild fish populations while providing more successful fishing experiences for anglers.The MWWT newsletter is one of the Trusts main vehicles for educating supporters about the watershed and about Trust stewardship and protection activities. The fall 2025 edition explained the Forest Habitat program on the Bowtown land, as well as detailing the 2025 water-quality monitoring program. The newsletter is mailed to all members and also published online