A wild Chinook salmon has been spotted in a tributary of the Klamath River in southern Oregon — roughly 230 miles from the Pacific Ocean — marking the first confirmed salmon presence in the upper river since 1912 C.E. The sighting came just months after the last of four dams on the mainstem Klamath was removed, reopening a waterway that had been blocked for more than a century.
At a glance
- Klamath River dam removal: Four dams blocking the river were taken out over several years by water utility managers in Oregon and California, with critical support from Indigenous tribes.
- Chinook salmon sighting: Fisheries biologists confirmed the fish in the upper river on October 16 and 17, 2024 C.E. — the first documented salmon above the former dam sites since 1912 C.E.
- Salmon restoration: State and tribal biologists are now working to bring back not just Chinook, but also steelhead, coho, Pacific lamprey, and ocean-going bull trout to the basin.
A century of silence on the river
The Klamath River once supported one of the largest salmon runs on the West Coast. Then, starting in the early twentieth century, a series of hydroelectric dams cut off access to hundreds of miles of spawning habitat. For generations, salmon could not reach the upper basin.
The Klamath Tribes — a collective of Indigenous peoples whose culture, diet, and spiritual life were shaped by the annual salmon migration — watched that relationship sever. Tribal members spent decades advocating for dam removal, often against what felt, as one leader put it, like an unmovable obstacle.
“The return of our relatives, the c’iyaal’s, is overwhelming for our tribe,” said Roberta Frost, Klamath Tribes secretary, using the Indigenous term for salmon. “The salmon are just like our tribal people, and they know where home is and returned as soon as they were able.”
How the dams came down
The removal of all four dams — spread across roughly 200 river miles — was the largest dam removal project in U.S. history. It was a joint effort led by water utility managers in Oregon and California, and it required decades of negotiation among federal agencies, state governments, farmers, and tribal nations.
The final dam came out in the summer of 2024 C.E. Within months, biologists began monitoring the reconnected river for signs that fish were moving upstream. They didn’t have to wait long.
Mark Hereford, project leader for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Klamath Fisheries Reintroduction effort, described the moment his team first suspected what they were seeing. “We saw a large fish the day before rise to the surface in the Klamath River, but we only saw a dorsal fin,” he said. “I thought, was that a salmon or maybe it was a very large rainbow trout?” When the team returned on October 16 and 17, they confirmed it: Chinook had come home.
Salmon know where home is
The speed of this return echoes what happened on Washington’s Elwha River, where the removal of two dams about a decade ago led to rapid recolonization by Chinook and steelhead — with no need for hatchery stocking. Fish seemed to find their way back on their own.
That biological resilience is part of what makes the Klamath sighting so significant. “This is an exciting and historic development in the Klamath Basin that demonstrates the resiliency of salmon and steelhead,” said Debbie Colbert, director of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. “It also inspires us to continue restoration work in the upper basin.”
Scientists now hope that steelhead — which still migrate up the lower Klamath and into California’s Trinity River — will push past the former dam sites as well. Over time, bull trout from the upper Klamath could begin migrating to the sea, and coho salmon and Pacific lamprey could pioneer their way back into the basin.
A long road still ahead
One confirmed fish is not a recovered population. Biologists are candid that rebuilding a functioning salmon run in the upper Klamath will take years, possibly decades. Water quality, habitat condition, and climate pressures — including warming river temperatures — remain serious concerns. The broader restoration of the Klamath basin involves ongoing work on riparian vegetation, sediment management, and tribal co-stewardship of the watershed.
But for a river that was silent for 112 years, one Chinook pushing 230 miles upstream is a signal worth celebrating.
Read more
For more on this story, see: Hatch Magazine
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Indigenous land rights gain global momentum ahead of COP30
- U.K. cancer death rates fall to their lowest level on record
- The Good News for Humankind archive on wildlife conservation
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