#dam-removal

#dam-removal

The Klamath Indigenous Land Trust recently purchased 10,000 acres along the Klamath River, signifying one of the largest Indigenous-led private land purchases in U.S. history as salmon continue to make their historic return to the newly revived watershed. The expansive property, located mostly in California and extending into Oregon, includes the sites of reservoirs that existed up until the removal of four of the Klamath's dams in 2023 and 2024.

Since the beginning of November, volunteers from the nonprofit group Alameda Creek Alliance which has worked to remove dams and install fish ladders since 1997 have recorded nearly a dozen specimens of Chinook Salmon. These sightings come just weeks after PG&E and the nonprofit CalTrout finished a $15 million project to remove a gas pipeline that was the last barrier impeding fish migration upstream.

Poet Robert Macfarlane savored the resilience of nature in a time when many think it cannot be restored. He pointed out that salmon appeared on the Klamath River only days after the removal of several dams were completed, writing in The New York Times: "Rivers are easily wounded, but given a chance, they revive with remarkable speed. Lazarus-like, their life pours back."