Stillwaters Environmental Education Center continues work to restore and preserve the Carpenter Creek/Appletree Cove Estuary in Kingston. This pristine and ecologically valuable ecosystem is known to most residents as “the slough.”

The estuary will be opened up to better tidal exchange next summer when the narrow culvert on South Kingston Road is replaced with a bridge. In subsequent years, the even smaller culvert under West Kingston Road will also be replaced with a bridge.

Other restoration activity also took place Aug. 29. Stillwaters assisted the ecosystem by placing logs and root wads in the marsh and lower stream, using a helicopter to lower them in. This is a long-awaited part of the lower Carpenter Creek restoration plan originally scheduled last year.

With a grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, large woody debris (LWD) was placed in the brackish high salt marsh of the estuary system, located to the north of West Kingston Road.

LWD is a term for large logs or root wads that are found in water bodies. Ideally, they appear because trees alongside the water fall or are blown over into the water. LWD is a boon to streams and marshes because it offers homes for all sorts of wildlife, but particularly salmon juveniles and spawning salmon. The hunks of trees or roots create pools and provide shade.

LWD also provides decaying matter as food for bugs, which become food for fish, birds and other wildlife, an important part of the natural ecosystem.