A Crane, Four Culverts, and Midnight Creek’s Long-Blocked Salmon Run

GREENWATER, WA—Four culverts on Midnight Creek, a tributary of the Lower Greenwater River just east of Enumclaw, have spent years blocking salmon, steelhead, and trout from reaching upstream habitat—and crews are finally pulling them out, one 20,000-pound concrete footing at a time.

The work is part of a landscape-scale restoration project on the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, carried out in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service. According to @troutunlimited, whose volunteers spent years walking streams and cataloging fish passage barriers in the area, these four culverts were among dozens identified for repair through that on-the-ground assessment work.

Beyond the fish, the project is designed to protect the road from storm damage and improve flood and drinking water resilience for communities downstream in the White River watershed, which the Greenwater feeds."restoration work"

The full reel is posted on @troutunlimited’s Instagram. It turns out "restoration work" sometimes looks a lot like a crane operator threading a concrete block out of a creek bed, which is as satisfying to watch as it sounds.

Watch this Instagram Reel