Salmon swim freely in the Klamath River for 1st time in a century after dams removed
HORNBROOK, California — For the first time in more than a century, salmon are swimming freely along the Klamath River and its tributaries. a major watershed near the California-Oregon border – just days after the largest dam removal project in American history was completed.
Researchers have determined that Chinook salmon began migrating Oct. 3 into previously inaccessible habitat above the site of the former Iron Gate Dam, one of four towering dams that have been demolished as part of a national movement to return rivers to their natural flow and to restore ecosystems for fish and other wildlife.
“It has been more than a hundred years since a wild salmon last swam this part of the Klamath River,” said Damon Goodman, regional director of the nonprofit California Trout. “I am incredibly humbled to witness this moment and share this news, standing on the shoulders of decades of work by our tribal partners, as the salmon return home.”
The Dam Removal Project was completed on October 2marking a major victory for local tribes who fought for decades to free hundreds of miles (kilometers) of the Klamath. Through protests, testimonies and lawsuits, the tribes demonstrated the environmental devastation caused by the four hydroelectric dams, especially to salmon.
Scientists will use SONAR technology to continue monitoring migrating fish, including Chinook salmon, Coho salmon and steelhead trout, throughout the fall and winter to obtain “important data on the river’s healing process,” Goodman said in a statement. “While the dam removal is complete, recovery will be a long process.”
Conservation groups and tribes have been working with state and federal agencies on a monitoring program to document migration and how fish respond to dam removal in the long term.
According to the advocacy group American Rivers, more than 2,000 dams had been removed in the US by February, most of them in the past 25 years. Among them were dams on Washington state’s Elwha River, which flows from Olympic National Park into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and the Condit Dam on the White Salmon River, a tributary of the Columbia.
The Klamath was once known as the third largest salmon producing river on the West Coast. But after energy company PacifiCorp built the dams to generate electricity between 1918 and 1962, the structures stopped the river’s natural flow and disrupted the life cycle of the region’s salmon, which spend most of their lives in the Pacific Ocean spends, but returns to his native rivers. spawn.
The fish population dropped dramatically. In 2002, a bacterial outbreak caused by low tides and warm temperatures killed more than 34,000 fish, mostly Chinook salmon. That kicked off decades of advocacy from tribes and environmental groups, culminating in 2022 when federal regulators approved a plan to remove the dams.