Cape Cod barrier blocking native trout for 73 years is set to be removed

Trout representative imageFor more than seven decades, a quiet stream in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, has been held back by a concrete barrier. Fresh Brook, once known as “Trout Brook,” was a thriving habitat for native sea-run brook trout, locally called “salters”, until the early 1950s. Anglers from across the country travelled to Cape Cod to fish in its one-and-a-half-mile stretch of cold, spring-fed water. But a series of construction projects, culminating in the installation of a concrete weir in 1953, cut off the trout from their ancestral spawning grounds and turned a lively ecosystem into a stagnant pool.Now, after years of planning and partnership, that weir is set to be removed. The Fresh Brook Restoration Project, led by Cape Cod National Seashore and a coalition of partners, aims