Salmon Make a Long-Awaited Return to the Klamath River for the First Time in 112 Years, After Largest Dam Removal in U.S.

For the first time in 112 years, Chinook salmon are swimming freely in the Klamath Basin in Oregon.

On October 16, biologists with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) spotted the fish above the former site of the J.C. Boyle Dam in the Upper Klamath River. The dam was one of four that had blocked the salmon’s migration between the Klamath Basin and the Pacific Ocean. Each of those dams was recently deconstructed in the largest dam removal project in United States history, which has restored the river to its natural, free-flowing state.

At first, biologists wondered if they had really sighted a salmon. “We saw a large fish the day before rise to surface in the Klamath river, but we only saw a dorsal fin,” says Mark Hereford, leader of ODFW’s Klamath Fisheries Reintroduction Project, in a statement. “I thought, was that a salmon, or maybe it was a very large rainbow trout?”

But when the team returned on October 16 and 17, they were able to confirm the fall-run Chinook—making them the first to spot the species in the region since 1912.

The return of the salmon comes less than two months after the end of the dam removals in California and Oregon, an effort that took decades of advocacy by the surrounding tribes—including the Yurok, Karuk, Shasta, Klamath and Hoopa Valley, among others—whose people have deep ties to the Chinook salmon.

Here is a short video of one of the 1st Klamath River salmon to make it to the tributaries above the former Iron Gate Dam. The clip was recorded last Friday by Yurok Fisheries Dept Geologist Kayah Ray, who is part of a team surveying salmon in the newly undammed river reach. pic.twitter.com/dNBNEDGLC3

— Yurok Tribe (@TheYurokTribe) October 21, 2024

Ron Reed, a Karuk tribe member and traditional fisherman, participated in the campaigns for dam removal, advocating that the river’s restoration would help salmon recover. He isn’t surprised the fish have returned so quickly to their ancestral waters, he tells the Los Angeles Times’ Ian James.

“The fact that the fish are going up above the dams now, to the most prolific spawning and rearing habitat in North America, it definitely shines a very bright light on the future,” Reed tells the Los Angeles Times. “Because with those dams in place, we were looking at extinction. We were looking at dead fish.”

In one poignant case, tens of thousands of Chinook salmon died off in the span of days in 2002, as the water quality in the dammed Klamath River deteriorated from the lack of flow. The dams, built between the early 1900s and 1962, also contributed to algae blooms and diseases, and they blocked the salmon’s annual migration.

The mass salmon deaths helped spark decades of advocacy from Klamath tribes and conservation groups. In November 2022, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved the $500 million project. The first dam to be destroyed, Copco No. 2, came down in fall 2023. Beginning in January this year, the remaining three dams had their reservoirs drained and their infrastructure removed. For the first time in more than a century, the river flowed freely by the end of August.

Now, with the dams destroyed, the Native tribes are excited to see the salmon return.

“This is what our members worked for and believed in for so many decades,” Roberta Frost, Klamath Tribes secretary, says in the ODFW statement. “The salmon are just like our tribal people, and they know where home is and returned as soon as they were able.”

Salmon can now swim more than 400 miles of the river, and biologists believe the salmon found in Oregon likely swam around 230 miles from the Pacific Ocean to get there. Reed and other members of the Karuk tribe have been able to return to their ancestral fishing traditions and have been catching fall-run salmon. Reed says the fish are “so much more beautiful this year,” per the Los Angeles Times.

Although Chinook salmon have returned to their native waters, most scientists say it could take three to five generations for the species to fully recover in the basin, reports the San Francisco Chronicle’s Kurtis Alexander.

But Reed feels confident that the dam removal will be a big help in revitalizing the fish populations. There’s a “magnetic vibration” among many people in Karuk communities, he tells the Los Angeles Times.

In a statement to the San Francisco Chronicle after the salmon observation in Oregon, Frankie Myers, vice chairman of the Yurok Tribe, said “the salmon remember” where they came from.

Alexa Robles-Gil | | READ MORE

Alexa Robles-Gil is a bilingual science journalist based in New York City. Her work has appeared in the Guardian, Undark, Inside Climate News and more.