The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1917-03-06
STOP POLLUTION OF OUR RIVERS AND PERPETUATE THE
 SHAD, SAYS W. K. NOLAN
President of State Board of Fisheries and Game Shows This Succulent Food Fish Will Soon Be Extinct Un
 less Action Is Taken-F Fishermen Are Now Taking Too Large Catches Each Season.

1 These fish made for the certain tri- butaries because they themselves had | been matched there. It is a known scientific fact that a shad will return after it has matured, to deposit it's
 spawn in the very stream where it or 1 iginated itself. It is in the course of
 such pilgrimages that it's capture is l possible; and, under reasonable Hmi- tations, would be entirely proper and practicable. It is not necessary that l all or a majority of the migrating shad should be permitted to escape the nets, to reach the spawning beds.
 But unless a proper proportion are given a fighting chance to do so, if al- most the entire number is appreh end 1 ed before spawning, the result is ob- viously certain to be utilization but an-
 initiation.
 What happens to the Connecticut river shad which seek to return to i the breeding streams may be under stood when it is realized that on the Pennington river, within a distance
 of three miles, there are annually set, l rOsS-stream, no fewer than eighty { six nets. How many of the fish ever I reach their spawning beds at the head 1 of this three-mile reach maye easily be magined. Only a very few strag- l; lers are permitted to fulfill their des- tiny of reproduction of their kind l Is it to be wondered that, with such a policy of everlasting followed wherever the shad make their ap- pearance, this variety of fish should have become scarce-that they are rapidly disappearing?
 Compare Connecticut with Ca1ifor- nia-alas! for the fame of our "New ] England thrift"
 Never was a shad known on the Pacific coast until the eggs were ta- ken there from the Connecticut river, matched and planted in California wa 1 ters. Now California has shad by the ] millions. Ten or fifteen cents will buy not a pound of shad but a whole big shad, in the markets of that state. Canning factories have been establish ed there, the output of which is enor- ! nous. The shad fisheries are great industry. And all because of plain, common sense legislation.
 The hyphenated Connecticut-Cali-
 fornia shad has been protected and has multiplied marvelously. Our hopeless Yankee shad is left to strug- ! gle against hopeless odds and has al-
 most disappeared
 l. There is at present a bill before the l legislature endorsed by the State Board of Fisheries and Game, provid- ing for the prohibition of netting in the breeding tributaries and reason
 able restricting and regulating the shad fishery in the main rivers. If it
 becomes law the shad will come
 back. If not there will soon be no
 such thing as a Connecticut shad. L. The issue is between the people of
 Connecticut and a small group of per
 sons wose only interest seems to be
 the taking of immediate profits The
 shad of the Connecticut rivers belong to the people of Connecticut and not to the few men who are doing their 1 best to exterminate them. And these
 once prosperous operators are work ing for their own effacement. They are killing the goose that laid the
 golden egg-and the bird is about at l its last gasp.