The 2025 Safford Road Culvert Replacement Project (SCR) is a collaboration among the Town of Pike, Wyoming County, and Trout Unlimited to restore aquatic connectivity within the Wiscoy Creek watershed and improve native brook trout habitat. WRI was invited to assess the aquatic macroinvertebrate community response at the SCR which is placed in a headwater tributary (herein ‘Safford Brook’) to Wiscoy Creek. Preliminary assessments by Trout Unlimited indicated the existing culvert structure is undersized, creating pooled water upstream of the road crossing, which then deposits fine sediments within the upstream reach, degrading quality stream bottom habitat. Perched culverts can be barrier to upstream fish movement (Gibson et al. 2011), and culverts in general have shown to interrupt or delay fish movement even if full passage is capable ( Alcott et al. 2021, Briggs and Galarowicz 2013). What effect inefficient hydraulic flows have on regulating macroinvertebrate populations in the immediate vicinity of culverts is understudied (Frankiewicz et al. 2021). The SRC study aims to increase our understanding around under-sized culverts and their influence on local hydrology and aquatic macroinvertebrate communities. The SRC study will present a pre/post rightsizing comparison between two sampling locations, one within each upstream and downstream reach surrounding the culvert. The information gleaned from this study, particularly on macroinvertebrate populations surrounding culvert enhancement projects, will allow resource managers to make increasingly more informed decisions on prioritizing site selections, improving culvert construction protocols, and executing aquatic connectivity improvement strategies. Pre-rightsizing data collection began in 2025, and post-rightsizing sampling is anticipated in 2027.