The Tacoma News Tribune covered the massive run of pink salmon on the White River this year. The Puyallup Tribe of Indians earlier pointed to these sorts of runs as benefiting weaker fish stocks in the river system, most namely, bull trout and steelhead.
The tribe monitors both species in watershed and is pointing to increased numbers of both, mostly likely because of a big pink run two years ago:
A record number of adult bull trout and juvenile steelhead migrated through the Puyallup River watershed this year, boosted by nutrients from a massive run of pink salmon two years ago.
“There was simply more food in the system in the last couple of years because decaying pink salmon carcasses fed practically every sort of organism in the river,” said Russ Ladley, resource protection manager for the Puyallup Tribe. “This shows that salmon restoration doesn’t just benefit one species, because all of the species in the river are interconnected.”
Here are some recent videos of migrating pinks in the White River system:
Further up the river in the Greenwater River, a tributary to the White:
