TROUT UNLIMITED’S
RED BROOK FAMILY DAY FUNDRAISER

Red Brook Family Day will take place on Sunday, September 13, 2009 at Red Brook Farm (1009 Red Brook Road) in Bourne, Massachusetts between 10 AM and 3 PM. This event - cookout, bucket raffle and silent auction - is sponsored by the 4000 member MA/RI Council of Trout Unlimited and its associated Trout Unlimited Chapters. The funds raised each year (for the past 15+ years) at Red Brook Family Day are used to support the Trustees of Reservations owned 218 acre Theodore Lyman Reserve and the restoration of Red Brook and its population of native, sea-run brook trout.

Visitors should take special note of the improving habitat there at Red Brook where numerous dams have been removed to increase stream flow and lower water temperatures.

The Theodore Lyman Reserve is part of the 638 acre Red Brook Reserve created in 2001 and managed under a Memorandum of Agreement between Trout Unlimited, Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, and the Trustees of Reservations.

The property that is now the Red Brook Reserve was donated by the Lyman family, the descendants of Theodore Lyman who began buying land along Red Brook in 1870. It was the intent of Theodore Lyman to preserve Red Brook’s sea-run brook trout, commonly known as salters. Beginning in 1988, Trout Unlimited began working with brothers Henry and Charles Lyman on a plan that ultimately would preserve three quarters of the riparian land along Red Brook as well as restore the brook’s salter brook trout population that had been declining for several decades.

At the present time, Red Brook is undergoing a restoration managed by MassRiverways, the stream restoration arm of the Mass. Div. of Fisheries and Wildlife. While Red Brook is fed by ample springs that keep it running cool throughout the summer, it suffers from severe sedimentation and from thermal pollution in its headwaters. To reduce sedimentation, several dams have been removed from the Lyman Reserve section of the stream, and trout habitat is being restored through the introduction of large woody debris to the brook. Grants from American Rivers, MassRiverways, U. S. Fisheries and Wildlife and the MA/RI Council of Trout Unlimited are funding the restoration. The A.D. Makepeace Company, owners of cranberry bogs in the headwaters of Red Brook, is providing valuable assistance in the form of earth moving machinery and operators. The Trustees of Reservations have also donated many hours of labor and equipment to Red Brook’s restoration.

Additionally, money raised at Red Brook Family Day has helped to fund TU’s stream monitoring program for Red Brook, as well as research that may have implications for sea-run brook trout populations through out their range, from Long Island, New York to Hudson’s Bay, Canada.

A genetics study done by Brendan Annett, who now heads the Waquoit Bay National Estuarine Reserve in Falmouth, Massachusetts, established that the brook trout of Red Brook and three Cape Cod salter streams, as well as, a salter stream on Long Island, were each stream specific distinct populations in the same way that wild salmon are river specific. Another study, done in partnership with the Waquoit Bay National Estuarine Reserve and M.D.F.W. is using PIT tags and antennae, both stationary and portable, to record the movements and growth rates of brook trout in Red Brook and two Cape Cod salter streams.

Trout Unlimited and its Red Brook partnership also share information and research results with an array of groups that are focused on the health of our environment and our anadromous fisheries. Some of them are The Coalition for Buzzards Bay, Mass Maritime Academy, Mass Division of Marine Fisheries, University of RI, and University of Mass, Dartmouth.

The work that the MA/RI Council of TU has done at Red Brook has been recognized by The Corporate Wetlands Partnership, Field and Stream magazine and The New England Outdoor Writers Association. Articles about Red Brook have appeared in TROUT magazine (Restoring A Beach Head for Salters, by Murray Carpenter, Winter 2005), Northern Sky News (April 2005), On The Water magazine (2005), The Worcester Telegram & Gazette (Brook trout a site to sea, April 2007), and the Wareham Courier (March 11, 2004). Additionally, the Trustees have written extensively about Red Brook in their periodical that reaches over 45,000 people in Massachusetts. The web-site of the MA/RI Council of TU also features our work at Red Brook.

We hope that you will join TU and its partners in carrying on the work begun by Theodore Lyman in 1870. As a member of Massachusetts’ first Fisheries Commission, Lyman hoped that what he learned from Red Brook would be helpful in restoring some of the many trout streams that were being lost to industrialization and poor land use practices. Today, thanks to the hard work and sacrifice of many people, Theodore Lyman’s dream is being fulfilled.

We are always in need of raffle and silent auction items for Red Brook Family Day, or if you like you can write a check to the MA/ RI Trout Unlimited Red Brook Fund. You can mail donations c/o Warren Winders, Red Brook Director, 599 Randolph Street, Abington, MA 02351, or better yet, bring a donation to Red Brook Family Day on September 13. For more information you can call me at (781) 878 1074, or email me at redbrook@verizon.net.

The Lyman Reserve is on Red Brook Road (coming from Rtes. 28/6), or accessed from Head of The Bay Road if you are coming
from Rte. 25 and the Bourne Rotary.

For a downloadable trail map or further directions, visit the TTOR Page on the Lyman Reserve or Mapquest.

Many thanks for your help.

Warren Winders
Red Brook Director
MA/RI TU

Read More about Red Brook Here:

First of 4 Dams Removed from Red Brook

Bringing Back Native Brookies | The Quashnet | Eastern Brook Trout Joint Venture | Ongoing Research

Additional Links to Project Partner Pages:

Riverways Program Projects

USGS: Quantifying Sediment Transport in Red Brook, Wareham, Massachusetts: Impacts of Dam Removal