Olympic Peninsula: Restoring Rainforest Rivers

On the wild coastal rivers of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, Trout Unlimited is removing migration barriers, reconnecting floodplains and restoring critical spawning and rearing habitat for struggling populations of wild salmon and steelhead.
Building on top of state and private funding, extensive federal investments provided through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) are allowing TU to expand the scale and impact of our restoration work in the coming years. For anglers and coastal tribes, this work is critical to rebuilding wild steelhead and salmon runs. For local communities, these investments mean good jobs and durable road systems designed to withstand the impacts of climate change.
In our new film, join TU’s Luke Kelly as he travels along iconic rainforest rivers visiting our partners and projects to celebrate the incredible restoration and reconnection work underway on the Olympic Peninsula.
(Video by Trout Unlimited)

[@joejames4231]

It’s so great to see people finally starting to undo all the damage the past 100 years of dam building, poor logging practices and road building have done to salmon and steelhead populations throughout the Pacific NW. These fish will thrive if we just give them half a chance.

[@hefnhef1]

Culverts - had no idea. Thanks for posting, this has been very informative and thank you to those doing the work.

[@stealthfirefishing]

Thank you all for restoring the river to be as great as it can be

[@bradbush9722]

Awesome video. In 2003 I moved from Kentucky to Olympic and worked at Lake Crescent Lodge for the season. Olympic NP is incredible and I don't get up there enough living in Portland. Thank you for all the improvements!

[@damonchampion823]

Love. Great work which restores faith in humanity 💚

[@pancakeface5717]

Good work. Foresters need to prevent the rivers from being degraded ever again.

[@reecedobson4740]

Awesome work! ❤

[@shawnkiesel5349]

The state of Washington should have been doing this restoration of natural habitat, 60 years ago

[@shrevesoule3567]

Outstanding.

[@allentisthammer4763]

Thank you.

[@CWS-h5z]

Thank you for this film. It is good to know that different groups/agencies/tribes are coming together to make this happen. I'm wondering what will happen to the Federal funding with the change in the administration??? Do you have any concerns about this?

[@eh3477]

Congress has been defunding federal land agencies intermittently for over 20 years. In 2024, even though the National Park Service has had a dramatic increase in visitors since the pandemic years, Congress tried to cut their budget. They planned such a large budget cut for the Forest Service that they announced they will hire no seasonal staff in 2025. These cuts were made even before the election.

[@NWJonathan]

Long live the fish !!! 🖤🐟✨🦾

[@CoopMauKona]

My place....

[@shawnkiesel5349]

90% of the reduction of the fish population it's from commercial fishing

[@thomasjones1778]

Well it all looks good on film but, Fish and Wildlife failed when they removed the Elwha dam and any other dam they remove and then turn around and build hatcheries instead of letting the native fish repopulate the streams. It wont take long.

[@TheDb4444]

You do realize the elwha dam removal was a national park service project, right? And the native salmon runs are increasing? You comment is riddled with inaccuracies

[@thems_the_brakes]

@@TheDb4444he’s saying the hatcheries are still being pushed… which is a known issue

[@garryderish2465]

Every major river, needs hatcheries to enhance the stocks , money is always the problem never enough of it

[@thems_the_brakes]

@@garryderish2465read the science, they hurt native fish by reducing the genetic pool

[@billsmith5109]

The hatcheries aren’t treated as a fish neutral item. It’s about employment. It sucks money off that could be used for habitat restoration. Instead the hatcheries are treated as the baseline expense. Habitat has to come on top. It’s the first cut.