With tools ranging from pointed shovels to the capacious bucket of a backhoe, volunteers participating in a Pootatuck Watershed Association (PWA) project on July 30 worked to improve the "connectivity" in a local river system, enhancing the ability of wild trout to swim upstream so that they can more easily spawn and reproduce.

Cole Baldino, a PWA intern overseeing the trout habitat project, said that the physical changes made should allow the wild trout to travel upstream more freely with the goal of increased reproduction and a higher population. The PWA is a private, nonprofit environmental protection group.

Volunteers made improvements in areas including the point where Oil Creek enters Deep Brook and the point downstream where Deep Brook enters the Pootatuck River.

At the Oil Creek/Deep Brook confluence, volunteers cleared the area of obstructions to improve water flow from the colder creek into the warmer brook, Mr Baldino said.

That work involved removing boulders and accumulated sediment to improve trout access to Oil Creek, he said. Logs and small cut evergreen trees were placed alongside the creek at its mouth to both stabilize a streambank and to create a beneficial sediment trap, he said.

Downstream, at the point where Deep Brook enters the Pootatuck River, volunteers removed an unused beaver dam, eliminating a major obstruction that has kept trout from swimming upstream from the Pootatuck River into its tributary Deep Brook, he said.

Also, as needed, cut evergreen trees were positioned along streambanks to stabilize those banks.

The volunteers plan to return to Oil Creek to spread fine gravel within improved riverine pools to enhance conditions for spawning, he said.

The project will include various plantings along the streams to create more shade and thus keep the water cool, which is a key to trout survival. Such plantings also limit streambank erosion.

Deep Brook and a section of the Pootatuck River are in one of nine wild trout management areas in the state. Those areas are not stocked. Fishing is allowed on a catch-and-release basis only. There is no closed season.

Mr Baldino will graduate from the State University of New York at Syracuse in December. His major course of studies is watershed science, with a minor in water resources. He is a 2012 graduate of Newtown High School.