MAINE WILDERNESS WATERSHED TRUST INC DBA PIERCE POND WATERSHED TRUST

Programs

1. 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.

   $53,360 spent
   71% of program spending

2. 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…

   $13,703 spent
   18% of program spending

3. Land Protection: In 2025, MWWT continued its efforts in support of acquisition of the 6,800 acres of watershed lands that are currently under commercial timber management. MWWT continued the search for appropriate swap parcels that would allow for Weyerhaeusers continued fulfillment of their SAPPI contract in the event of a land sale to MWWT. The Trust also renewed and/or continued conversations with all other watershed landowners regarding its interest in owning watershed lands should they desire to sell.Continuing an effort approved last year for its fee acreage in Bowtown, MWWT completed an updated forest management plan and inventory as part of a New England Forestry Foundation (NEFF) and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) program designed to improve wildlife habitat and forest health while increasing carbon sequestration.

   $8,039 spent
   11% of program spending

The 3 programs described on its FY2025 Form 990, listed largest first by expense. Program spending in total: $75,102.