In July 1995, Save The Bay established its Habitat Restoration program aimed at assessing the health of Narragansett Bay habitats, developing and implementing a long-range restoration plan and ensuring the protection of the Bay’s remaining habitats.
See video examples of our work at Fields Point (Providence), Stillhouse Cove (Cranston), Silver Creek (Bristol) and visit our eelgrass harvest site at King's Beach (Newport). A 1996 baseline assessment confirmed fears that Rhode Island’s estuaries are in a dangerous state of decline as a result of non-point source pollution, wastewater treatment plant effluent and extremely high population density in the coastal communities. It is estimated that 50% of Narragansett Bay’s salt marshes are completely gone, and 100% of those remaining are degraded. The majority of Bay eelgrass beds have been effectively lost -- today, a fraction remain of the estimated thousands of acres of eelgrass beds that once flourished in the Bay ( mapping description). Furthermore, only 50% of the historic fish runs in the Bay’s main tributaries are still able to support healthy anadromous fish populations. |