Farmland flooded for salmon nursery

Two excavator bulldozers loomed over a slowly widening hole in the dike, as water rushed through for the first time in a century on Monday.

Their powerful scoops scraped up piles of rock and dirt, clearing a new path for young salmon to enter and grow in an estuary habitat. Organizers at the Fir Island Farms Estuary on Monday celebrated the first results of the 7-year-long project to help restore the dwindling Chinook salmon population.

Removing part of the 3,110-foot dike allows the juvenile fish to swim into about 130 acres of new tidal marsh prior to traveling to the ocean.

The young fish w...