Excerpt:
After decades of conflict, farmers and tribes say they’re working in concert to restore salmon habitat in the Klamath Basin. But two dams remain.
“OK, babies! Here we go!”
Klamath tribal member and fish tech Charlie Wright coached dozens of young hatchery spring chinook as she poured them out of a bucket into a tributary of the upper Klamath River in Southern Oregon in November 2023.
“They’re like, ‘Oh, it’s cold!‘” she said as the fish swam away from the bucket and changed color in their new environment. “Look how pretty green they turn here. They look like happy babies.”
A lot of hope was pouring into the river along with those fish as the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Klamath Tribes entered the beginning stages of starting a new run of spring chinook salmon. Those hatchery fish were the very beginning of what could be the first run of spring chinook to survive in the upper Klamath Basin since the early 1900s.
The country’s largest dam removal project took four dams off the Klamath River in Southern Oregon and Northern California over the past two years.
A free-flowing river has reemerged where Copco 1 and 2, Iron Gate and J.C. Boyle dams used to be. For Indigenous tribes, including the Klamath, Shasta, Karuk, Hoopa Valley and Yurok, the project was a huge victory.
Painful water conflicts have dragged on for decades in the Klamath Basin, with farmers, fish and tribes all suffering.
Now four dams are out, bringing renewed hope for salmon restoration. But on the Klamath, it’s going to take a lot more to piece the basin together again.
Above the former sites, the landscape has been transformed since the river last flowed free. Agriculture has come to dominate the region, bringing water pollution and impaired wetlands. And federal funding for many of the planned habitat restoration projects is frozen.
Two Klamath River dams have not been removed in Southern Oregon, so tribes see challenges for returning fish, which may have been blocked last fall by the first of two dams that still remain. That could bring a new dam removal fight – focused on the Keno and Link River dams.
With Link River Dam crucial to the Klamath Project irrigation system that delivers water to farms in the upper basin, more conflicts between tribes and farmers could be in store. But for now, many are focused on working together.
A reconnected river promises better habitat for struggling salmon runs that used to be among the largest on the West Coast. Last fall, chinook salmon returned to stretches of the river in Southern Oregon they hadn’t seen in over a century.
But even tribal leaders who fought for dam removal are worried about what comes next for the fish returning to Oregon.
“Dams are coming out. Fish are coming home. But I think about: What are they coming home to?” Jeff Mitchell, chairman of the culture and heritage committee for the Klamath Tribes, said.
Above the former dam sites, the landscape was transformed for agriculture, with hundreds of thousands of acres of lakes and wetlands drained and converted to farmland.
Keno and Link River dams remain on this stretch of the river to divert water to farms, but there’s not enough water to go around.
So, the upper basin suffers from chronic drought and outbreaks of toxic bacteria in Upper Klamath Lake that are fueled by excess nutrients running off the surrounding farms and ranches.
Last year, thousands of birds died from a bacterial disease called botulism, caused by a lack of water at the Klamath wildlife refuges.
Mitchell wonders how salmon will survive on this Southern Oregon landscape. It’s unclear whether they can even swim past Keno and Link River dams because their fish ladders weren’t built for adult salmon passage.
“We have a beautiful homeland,” Mitchell said. “But for 150 years, we’ve taken it the wrong direction. We’re on the edge of losing everything…”
