Videographer Nancy Hohmann and Western Foothills Land Trust and Portland Water District staffs spent a morning tracing the flow of the Crooked River.

Land trust films the Crooked River

BETHEL – With a donation from Lighthawk, a U.S.-based nonprofit that links private planes and pilots with conservation organizations that need to see or film lands from the air, videographer Nancy Hohmann and staff from the Western Foothills Land Trust and the Portland Water District spent an early fall morning tracing the circuitous flow of waters in the Crooked River.

The crew started filming from the river’s source near Songo Pond in Bethel to where the Crooked merges with the Songo River before flowing into Sebago Lake. As the Crooked River itself is part of the Presumpscot River watershed, filming continued along the path of the Presumpscot River from Sebago Basin to Casco Bay, south of Falmouth.

Interested in protecting the resources of the Crooked River, the Western Foothills Land Trust accepted a conservation easement on a 350-acre parcel protecting 1.5 miles of the river at McDaniels Rips last December, and is involved in a Crooked River watershed project with the Portland Water District, Loon Echo Land Trust and the Upland Headwaters Alliance.

As well as providing spawning habitat for Sebago Lake’s landlocked Atlantic salmon, the river is Sebago Lake’s major tributary. Sebago is the pubic water source for 11 Maine communities, including Portland.

Al Rollins, Limerick-based volunteer pilot for Lighthawk, picked up his passengers on Sept. 22 at the Lewiston-Auburn airport and proceeded toward Bethel. The Crooked River is tricky to spot from the air at this time of year as the river meanders through canopied terrain.

The resulting video footage will be kept as a record of the watershed; an edited version will be shown at the Crooked River Watershed Coalition project’s first public meeting scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 21, at the Crooked River Masonic Lodge in Bolsters Mills.