During the last week three of the Middle Fork gates and/or locks were vandalized. The Bessemer Gate (DNR) was bent out of shape and hanging open until it was partially repaired and the lock replace.

The left-side lock on the Taylor Campground gate was removed and was still missing as of February 21. It may have been cut off twice.The lock was also cut off the Dingford gate — quite a trick as located in a hard to access spot inside a sturdy metal post. No damage to the Dingford gate itself was observed and the lock has been replaced.
In addition the cable car just downstream of the TANW1 river gage was removed by the USGS because nearly every time they came out the lock had been cut and the cable car was stranded in mid-span. This has been going on for several years and the USGS started locking the cable car in 2012. In the future the river gage engineers will us a remote controlled device to calibrate the gage by measuring water flow at various depths and locations across the river. This is what used to be done in a more manual process by lowering a flow meter from the cable car.