Salmon will soon swim freely in the Klamath River for first time in a century once dams are removed

Story: 2024 C.E.  |  Last updated: May 1, 2026

For the first time in more than a century, salmon will have free passage along California’s Klamath River — after crews breached the last rock diversions upstream of two nearly demolished dams, Iron Gate and Copco No. 1. The breakthrough arrives just in time for fall Chinook spawning season, marking the practical culmination of the largest dam removal project in U.S. history.

At a glance

• Klamath River salmon: The Klamath was once the third-largest salmon-producing river on the U.S. West Coast before four dams, built between 1918 and 1962, severed the fish’s access to hundreds of miles of spawning habitat.
• Dam removal project: Four dams — Copco No. 2, Copco No. 1, Iron Gate, and J.C. Boyle — were slated for full demolition, with reservoirs drained and structural removal underway since March 2024 C.E.
• Tribal advocacy: The Karuk and Yurok Tribes spent at least 25 years fighting for demolition; salmon hold deep ceremonial and spiritual significance for both nations and for other Indigenous peoples along the river.

A century of blocked passage

Power company PacifiCorp built the four dams to generate electricity across four decades of the 20th century. The structures worked as designed — but at a severe cost to the river and the communities who depended on it.

Salmon spend most of their lives in the Pacific Ocean before returning to the freshwater rivers where they hatched. The dams made that return impossible for the upper river’s fish. Populations fell sharply over the following decades.

The crisis came into sharpest focus in 2002 C.E., when a bacterial outbreak — driven by low water levels and warm temperatures pooling behind the dams — killed more than 34,000 fish, most of them Chinook salmon. That disaster catalyzed a coalition of tribes, scientists, and environmental groups that would spend the next two decades pushing toward this moment.

What removal means for the river

“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.

Joshua Chenoweth, senior riparian ecologist for the Yurok Tribe, put it plainly: “Now the healing can really begin as far as the river restoring itself.” Chenoweth pointed to the Elwha River in Washington state — where two dams were removed starting in 2011 C.E. — as evidence that rivers recover strongly once obstacles are gone. “You just have to remove the dams, and then rivers are really good at kind of returning to a natural state.”

There have already been reports of salmon at the river’s mouth beginning their upstream journey. Michael Belchik, senior water policy analyst for the Yurok Tribe, said he is hopeful fish will push past the former Iron Gate dam site soon. “I think we’re going to have some early successes,” he said. “I’m pretty confident we’ll see some fish going above the dam.”

The dam removal is part of a broader national trend. As of early 2024 C.E., more than 2,000 dams had been removed across the U.S., the majority in the past 25 years, according to American Rivers. Projects on Washington’s Elwha River and the White Salmon River’s Condit Dam helped establish the playbook the Klamath project followed.

The trade-offs worth naming

At full capacity, the four Klamath dams produced less than 2% of PacifiCorp’s energy — enough to power roughly 70,000 homes. Hydroelectric power is classed as a clean, renewable energy source, which makes this kind of removal a genuinely complicated call. Advocates argue the ecological damage these particular dams caused far outweighed their energy value; others note the removal sets a precedent that will complicate future conversations about dams that contribute more substantially to the grid.

The project also carries a $500 million price tag, funded by California taxpayers and PacifiCorp ratepayers.

And recovery will take time. Mark Bransom, chief executive of the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, the nonprofit created to oversee the project, noted that it took about a decade after the Elwha dam removals before the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe could fish again in meaningful numbers. “You can’t undo 100 years’ worth of damage and impacts to a river system overnight,” he said.

Why this moment matters

The Klamath project was approved by federal regulators in 2022 C.E. after decades of sustained pressure — mostly from Indigenous nations who never stopped insisting the river could be restored. That persistence shaped policy, secured funding, and ultimately moved four concrete structures that had stood for generations.

For the Karuk, Yurok, and other tribes along the river, the return of salmon is not only an ecological event. It is a cultural one — the reestablishment of a relationship between people and place that the dams interrupted but did not end.

Two smaller dams remain farther upstream, but both include fish ladders that allow salmon to pass. The hardest barriers are now gone. What comes next is the river’s own work.

Read more

For more on this story, see: NBC News

For more from Good News for Humankind, see:

• Renewables now make up at least 49% of global power capacity
• U.K. cancer death rates down to their lowest level on record
• The Good News for Humankind archive on environmental restoration

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