Salmon will soon swim freely in the Klamath River for first time in a century

August 28, 2024 1:05 AM
By Associated Press



This image provided by Swiftwater Films shows a downstream view of crews working at the Iron Gate coffer dam site along the Klamath River on Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2024, in Siskiyou County, Calif.

For the first time in more than a century, salmon will soon have free passage along the Klamath River and its tributaries — a major watershed near the California-Oregon border — as the largest dam removal project in U.S. history nears completion.

Crews will use excavators this week to breach rock dams that have been diverting water upstream of two dams that were already almost completely removed, Iron Gate and Copco No. 1. The work will allow the river to flow freely in its historic channel, giving salmon a passageway to key swaths of habitat just in time for the fall Chinook, or king salmon, spawning season.

“Seeing the river being restored to its original channel and that dam gone, it’s a good omen for our future,” said Leaf Hillman, ceremonial leader of the Karuk Tribe, which has spent at least 25 years fighting for the removal of the Klamath dams. Salmon are culturally and spiritually significant to the tribe, along with others in the region.

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As of February, more than 2,000 dams had been removed in the U.S., the majority in the last 25 years, according to the advocacy group American Rivers. Among them were dams on Washington state’s Elwha River, which flows out of Olympic National Park into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and Condit Dam on the White Salmon River, a tributary of the Columbia.

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