Enumclaw dairy farm helps save rare Chinook salmon
An organic dairy farm in Enumclaw is helping save one south Puget Sound's last wild runs of spring Chinook salmon.
John VanWieringen's grandfather bought the farm in 1936. Decades ago, his father described the nearby creeks as so full of salmon that you could walk across the creek and never touch the ground.
"I'd like to bring it back to that," VanWieringen said. "The idea was doing this project to make it so that my grandkids, my grandkids' kids can see that very thing."
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VanWieringen's organic dairy, with all the curious cows, is now the site of one of King County's latest salmon habitat restoration projects. Crews excavated a side channel of Boise Creek, one of the most important habitats for wild spring Chinook.
"Boise Creek is the only stream in King County that provides habitat for spring run Chinook, which is one of the most rare runs of salmon in Puget Sound. We are very keen on restoring and enhancing the habitat in the stream in particular so we don't lose that fish run to extinction," explained King County Green and White River Basin Steward, Josh Kahan.
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"We are trying to do everything we can to protect the salmon, protect the water, protect the ground that we farm and hopefully this will show that's exactly what we are trying to do," VanWieringen said.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/enumclaw-dairy-farm-helps-save-rare-chinook-salmon/ar-AABwuVS
