Photo by Melissa Paly
The path from joining afternoon nature walks in the region to standing in downtown Exeter in a herring costume may not have been a straight one, but for a group of area residents it turned out to be a highly rewarding route.
Exeter resident Joan Pratt started as a volunteer with Southeast Land Trust, where she realized she wanted to better understand Great Bay. She joined watershed walks led by the Great Bay Changemaker Program and Great Bay-Piscataqua Waterkeeper Melissa Paly. This led Pratt to sign up for the Changemaker Bootcamp last fall, a program started as part of the Great Bay 2030 funding initiative and supported by the Great Bay Stewards, the Conservation Law Foundation, and the Great Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve.
Led by Paly, Reserve Coastal Training Program Coordinator Lynn Vaccaro, and Changemaker Coordinator Katrie Hillman, the four-session Bootcamp has focused on a different river in the watershed for each session, most recently the Lamprey River. Participants learn about the threats facing the Lamprey and other rivers flowing into Great Bay and how to influence community decisions to address these challenges. Sessions include guest speakers from local governments and environmental organizations, skill-building exercises, watershed walks – plus a complimentary dinner at the start of each session.
“I learned many skills at bootcamp, mostly about navigating the various local governments in the towns that are part of the Great Bay estuary,” says Pratt. “Also how to identify what you are studying or working on and to ask specific questions at the start to move your project forward, like getting a local support group together, setting meeting dates, a timeline, etc.”
Paly asked Pratt if she would consider taking on the organization of a group of interested Exeter residents to head up a “Free the Exeter River” Campaign, aimed at supporting a warrant article removing the town’s Pickpocket Dam. The decision was on the town’s warrant for March 2025. Pratt wanted a co-chair for the work, and found one right in the Bootcamp: fellow Exeter resident Jim Breeling. He was “someone with a lot more knowledge already, also with tech skills, which I am short on,” says Pratt. “By the second session we had agreed to move forward with a plan to take this on. So the Bootcamp actually got us together!”
“I had previously taken a UNH extension course on becoming a Natural Resource steward and then made the leap into the Changemaker series,” says Breeling. “I was already monitoring the Town of Exeter’s River Advisory Committee work on the Pickpocket dam and decided to become an advocate for dam removal.” Advocates for the dam’s removal argue that it was the most cost-effective way of responding to the dam’s “high hazard” classification by the state; it would also lead to long-term environmental benefits, including improved water quality, enhanced fish migration and habitat, and a more natural river ecosystem.
The group used a very deliberately considered publicity campaign for the warrant article, including visibility sessions at the town hall and bridge, letters to the editor, and a social media campaign. “The public Facebook page (Exeter, NH Community Forum) has more than 14,000 subscribers and has become a very useful outlet,” says Breeling. “Our opposition was utilizing the same ‘channel’ so we were quite effective in providing rebuttal of their posts as well as positive postings of our own.” Breeling also used the public speaking skills he had learned in the Bootcamp to advocate at the January 2025 Exeter Town Deliberative session.
For both Breeling and Pratt, the work is not finished. “I plan on participating in whatever way I can to make sure these [needed construction] permits are obtained,” says Breeling. “In addition, I became one of the Town of Exeter’s appointed members of the Exeter-Squamscott River Local Advisory Committee and plan to learn more about its function and role in protecting the watershed.” For Pratt, future plans include helping as the permitting and public hearing processes go forward in Exeter, and continuing to attend meetings about Great Bay and local water issues in particular. For now, the two changemakers are proud of what they’ve accomplished. “We did it!!!!,” says Pratt.