The Klamath River Finds Its Flow Again

We’ve finally done something right by Ma Nature for a change.

After a century of letting salmon stare at a dam wall like a tourist trapped in front of a “road closed” sign, the Klamath River is again rolling free, and the fish are doing the same. Just a few days ago, the largest dam removal project in U.S. history got the final whistle, and the salmon didn’t waste a second—already wriggling their way into stretches of the river they hadn’t seen since Teddy Roosevelt was in the White House.

Now, if you’re a Chinook salmon, that’s like finding out the freeway you’ve been stuck on for 100 years finally opened up a rest stop. And that happened on Thursday, October 3, when those fish started migrating past where the Iron Gate Dam used to sit, likely thinking, “Well, it’s about time!”

This dam removal wasn’t just a weekend project, either. It took decades of protests, lawsuits, and tribal voices hollering to get these dams out.

When PacifiCorp built the four dams last century, it became lights out for the salmon. The dams blocked hundreds of miles of prime fish habitat, and in 2002, the poor fish had it so bad that 34,000 died in one go. That woke folks up, and by 2022, the feds finally gave the green light to take the dams down.

Sure, the salmon are back now, and the river’s healing has a long road ahead. They’re tracking the fish with fancy SONAR technology to make sure all is on the up and up. They’re even using fancy SONAR to track the fish, which sounds like setting up speed traps for salmon.

Let’s hope they don’t start issuing tickets for “unauthorized spawning.”