Lauren Brown
	New Haven Land Trust

What is your job at the New Haven Land Trust?

My job as the Director of Land Conservation at the New Haven Land Trust and what that means is we try to acquire property, which we can preserve as a nature sanctuary and I also help with the maintenance of our properties.      

When did you first decide that you wanted to help the environment?

I decided that I wanted to help the environment in 1970, a long time before you were born. That was the first earth day in 1970 and I had always loved the outdoors and it always made me sad to see trees being cut down and ugly buildings being built.  When Earth Day came along, I said this is for me and I jumped on the wagon and never got off.

How is your job important to the community?

I think that what the New Haven Land Trust is doing for the community is important because we are taking pieces of land that are still in their natural state and we’re insuring that they’ll stay that way forever and insuring that they'll be there for the people in the city to enjoy.

Does your work have a positive affect on the environment?  

I think that preserving land as a nature sanctuary the way we do has a positive effect on many people because many people like to get outside and enjoy the outdoors. We had a phone call a while ago from a man at the Point, he lives right near our Long Wharf Nature Preserve. He called and he said, "I grew up in the country and my brother and I used to play out in the fields and the woods all the time. And when I moved to the city I was so sad because there was no place to go. There was no nature. And then I discovered the preserve." And then he said, "Now I walk there every day and it makes me feel so much better."

What are alewives?

Alewives are a kind of fish. They’re about this long. It’s a kind of herring. And I guess I’ll tell you more about them in connection with one of the other questions but they live pretty much up and down the eastern seaboard from North Carolina all the way up into Canada.

Can you tell us about the migration of the alewives?

It’s hard to decide where to start this story because it’s a circle; it’s a cycle.  So I’ll start actually with the spring when the male and female alewives, the adults, are ready to mate. They like to mate in shallow mucky ponds. They lay their eggs there. The eggs hatch out. The young are tiny but they get bigger and bigger and by the end of the summer they’re about this long. And then they leave those ponds and go down whichever river the pond is connected to. They go down the river and they go all the way up to the Northern Atlantic Ocean. They stay there for about four years while they get big and this is, of course, assuming they haven’t been eaten, because a lot of them get eaten. But the ones that survive get bigger, bigger, and bigger until they get full size in three or four years. And they come back to the exact same river they came out of and that’s the most important part of the migration, the most amazing thing, all the way from the Northern Atlantic Ocean. They find their way back to Long Island Sound, they find their way back to New Haven, they find their way back to the exact river in New Haven they came from, or whatever river they came from. And that’s when they're ready to lay eggs and fertilize eggs and the cycle starts all over again.

Why do you think it is important to track the alewives in our rivers?

Alewives are important for many reasons.  And some people ask us that because alewives are not a fish that a fisherman would go out and want to catch.  So some people say,  “Oh, why are you bothering with alewives?  I don’t want to bother going out to catch an alewife, they’re too small, there’s not enough food on them.  But, the fish that the fishermen do like to catch like striped bass, they eat alewives.  So, it’s good to have alewives around to feed the striped bass. The alewives are also important food for many, many other animals. Osprey, which are coming back, which were endangered once, the osprey eat alewives. Otter, dolphins, raccoons, gulls, herons lots and lots of other animals eat alewives.

What is the history of the alewives in New Haven?

When the settlers first got here, the European settlers, some of them were almost saved by the alewives because the time of year when the alewives come up the stream in the late spring is the time of year when they didn’t have a whole lot to eat.  Because they had their farms and they had their harvest and they stored food over the winter but by early spring they were usually running out of food.  They call it the starving time. And then the alewives would come up the river. And in those days there were hundreds of thousands of more fish than there are now.  And people said you could practically put your hand in the river and pick them out or almost walk across the river there were so many fish.  And the Indians taught them how to catch the alewives because the Indians used to eat them a lot too.  Nowadays people don’t want to eat them, they say, “Oh they are such a scrawny fish, I don’t want to bother eating that fish.”  But the colonists were very happy to see the alewives and some of them were saved from starvation because of the migration of the alewives.

What kinds of fish are common in our rivers?

White suckers are common, and then you have migratory fish like the striped bass and the blue fish that will come up the rivers at different times of year.  Eels, we have eels in our rivers, sunfish, perch, shad. This time of year there are lots of shad coming up.  They’re migratory just like the alewives.

Can you tell us about the fish ladders?

The New Haven Land Trust is tracking the alewives in the West River and the State Department of Environmental Protection is tracking alewives all the way up and down the coast. Because we have been building fish ladders, the state is building fish ladders on many streams and rivers up and down the coast, and the New Haven built one fish ladder.  We go out there every spring to see if there are alewives in the ladder because it’s important to know if there are fish in the ladders. And it’s also important to know how many alewives there are in the rivers and see if the populations are coming back.

How do fish ladders work?

Oh, now that’s a good question, we really haven’t covered that.  I told you, in the days of the colonists there were millions of alewives up and down the coast of Connecticut and the rivers were just thick with them.  And we’ll talk about the West River in New Haven in particular.  They think that every spring, maybe 10,000 alewives would come up the river.  And now, you’re lucky if you see 1,000. There are much many, many fewer and the reason is, well there are many reasons, but the main reason all up and down the coast is that people built damns on the rivers.  They built them for lots of reasons but in the early days they built them for waterpower and they had mills.  And the fish come up the river. They swim against the current, which is amazing. Have you ever tried swimming against the current? It is very difficult.  They swim against the current. They come up the river to go to those ponds. Then people built damns and so the fish couldn’t get to the ponds. And in the West River there are some ponds that they can still get to but, they couldn’t get to the best ones up stream.  That’s why there are so many fewer alewives. So we built a ladder, that’s what it’s called, a fish ladder. It’s built out of aluminum, and it’s kind of hard to describe. If you don’t ever see one but it has different steps in a way it’s all filled with water but it’s a series of steps it’s so the fish can jump a little distance the dam is about this high. Now they can’t jump that high but they can jump a few inches and they just jump, jump, jump and then finally get to the top and get into the pond.   And the state has been building fish ladders all up and down the coast of Connecticut to help the fish get over the dams.  I’m glad you asked that.

Are fish from our rivers safe to eat?

Some fish are safe to eat and some are less safe to eat. Fish like the bluefish and the striped bass and the alewives, what they call the migratory fish, those don’t spend a whole lot of time in our rivers. They mainly are in Long Island or in the ocean, so they’re pretty safe because they can’t pick up pollutants that are in the river. Some of the fish that are in the rivers all the time like trout, sometimes there are problems with them because pollutants that were dumped in the river along time ago and they’re in the sediment. They’re in the mud at the bottom and it’s hard to get them out.  But it’s best to call the Health Department. Generally, you know, maybe if you eat fish once a week or you don’t eat them too often it’s ok, but it’s best to call the Health Department and get information for certain kinds of fish.

What equipment do you use?

What equipment do we use for the monitoring? It’s very simple we really use our eyes, that’s what we really use just to look at the fish and then we have a thermometer to take the water temperature. And the reason we‘re doing that, the Department of Environmental Protection wants to find out if there’s a certain temperature when the alewives come upstream. We still haven’t quite figured out what it is that brings them upstream. Some years they come in early May, sometimes late May, it’s different all the time. And we‘re trying to figure out what it is that determines their travels.

Have you noticed any changes in the bird populations?

Are there any differences in the bird populations? Now the populations have changed in many, many ways but for many different reasons.  For instance the cormorants are very common in Connecticut now.  Our Quinnipiac Meadows Preserve sees the double-breasted cormorants up.  Thirty or forty years ago there were very few cormorants in Connecticut. They weren’t breeding in Connecticut at all, and now they're nesting up and down the coast. But they have spread down from the north. There are other birds that have spread from the south. There are birds that have come back, birds that used to be here and almost hunted out and now have come back.  But as I said, the reasons are very different. And then there are some populations that are declining.  So bird populations are changing for sure, but in many ways, and different species change differently. And it goes one way and another way, but you can’t attribute to one cause or another.           

Do you have any interesting stories to share with us?

Do I have interesting stories I would like to share with you?  I think one of my favorites is one day when I was down at our Long Wharf nature preserve, which is right down on the harbor and it was a day when the tide really, really low and there was mud in maybe a half a mile out and people out there walking on the mud. And I just sat there watching the people. And then a family came up and they were covered in mud. They were up to their knees in mud. Their shoes, their socks, their pants, they were totally muddy and they had been out on the mud flats. And I said hello to them. And it turned out that they had come all the way from the Hartford area and they said, “ We just love to come down here, and we love to go out  in the mud and we love to pick up the shells and look at the clams and the birds.” And they were just having such a great time walking the mud. And that’s one of my favorite stories.

Was there any time in which your job was particularly hard and why?

You know that’s a very good question. I was thinking about it a lot and I think that any job that is worth having has its times when it is hard.  And in this job the times when its hard are when we want to acquire a piece of land.  

Do you think the water quality on our rivers has been getting better or worse?

Over all the water quality is much better than it used to be, much, much better. There are still problems but it is much better. We don’t have raw sewage going into the rivers any more and we don’t have factories dumping lot of awful things into the river any more. But one problem, as I said, is that there is a lot stuff in the mud in the bottom. That’s going to stay there forever and there are creatures that eat the stuff on the bottom. So they get it in their bodies and then fish that eat those creatures get it in their bodies. That’s a big problem. And there are still some problems, but it’s certainly better than it was.

Is there any way to remove the pollutants under the mud?

Is there any way you can remove the things that are under the mud, that’s a complicated question that a lot of people argue about, quite a lot. And some people say that you should go out and dig up all that mud and get it out of the river. Other people say that’s worse than just leaving it there, because when you dig it up you get a lot of silt that floats into the river. And all that stuff gets dredged up again and gets back into the water. So some people say you should just leave it there. And it’s also very expensive to dig it up. But I wish I could give you a yes or no answer, but people who know a lot more about it than I do have been arguing about it for quite a long time. It’s a very controversial question.         

If a student were interested in your career what advice would you give them?

 I would say definitely go for it, because it’s a very satisfying career. And I would also say to work hard and pick all the various skills you can pick up. It’s not just a question of being outside and enjoying the outdoors. I’m sure you kids are all very good with computers and just keep on learning all the computer programs and all the computer skills you can. Math, science, reading, and there are a lot of different skills that come into play in this work. So the more skills and the more knowledge you have, the better off you’ll be.