First Chinook salmon spotted in Klamath River Basin since 1912 just weeks after dams removed

South of Crater Lake National Park and just east of ancient volcano Mt. McLoughlin sit both Upper Klamath Lake and Lake Ewauna, the headwaters of the Klamath River. The river itself flows nearly 260 miles to the southwest, crossing through the Klamath National Forest & Butte Valley National Grassland before eventually slamming into the Pacific Ocean on the northern California coast near the town of – you guessed it – Klamath.

Despite its passage through national forest, national grassland, and its presence just south of one of the nation’s most iconic national parks, the river itself has not always been held in such high importance by all in the annals of preservation.

Rest assured, the Klamath has always been revered by native peoples and a small, overmatched sect of scientists who realized it not only shed more water than any river in the area aside from the Sacramento, but also served as major migratory spawning grounds for multiple trout and salmon species. Despite said importance to the vitality of the local ecosystem, it was targeted as one of the ideal rivers in our country for hydroelectic dams in the early half of the 20th century, with four dams eventually controlling most of the flow beginning as early as 1908.

Fortunately, the impact of those dams on the local environment reached a head at the end of the last decade. Spearheaded by the Klamath River Renewal Project, four dams on the Klamath – Iron Gate, Copco 1&2, and J.C. Boyle – were systematically demolished and removed over the last handful of years, the final of which disappeared for good in September.

Lo and behold, it took less than a month before a Chinook salmon was seen migrating further north on the Klamath than at any point since 1912. Oregon Public Broadcasting documented the migrating Chinook over the weekend, noting that “salmon have been spotted spawning in a tributary above the former Iron Gate Dam site in Northern California” for the first time in over 60 years.

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The impact of the dams that have existed on this particular river for the better part of a century will be documented immediately, with these kinds of results sure to follow. It’s hardly a stretch to assume that the local migratory trout and salmon populations will thrive in ways they’ve not been able to for decades, and the trickle-down impact of their health on that of local peoples, the whale populations that feed on them at sea, and the soils surrounding the river when these fish die after spawning will be invaluable.

It’s the latest microcosm of a movement that’s been building steam for decades. Patagonia helped produce a pair of films during the 2010s that highlight the impact of dams on these rivers not only for the fishing and outdoor recreation communities, but on the ecosystems as a whole.

Released in 2015, DamNation focused on the restoration of Washington’s Elwha River, a 70+ mile migratory salmon paradise that flows north from the Olympic Mountains to the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Two dams on the river – the first constructed beginning in 1910 – devastated the habitat for all native salmonid species on the Olympic Peninsula, and the removal of them in the early 2010s became a catalyst for dam removal elsewhere.

Artifishal, released in 2019, focuses on one of the major byproduct of humans attempting to recreate a world where salmonid species aren’t spawning naturally – that we’ve begun to artificially produce them in hatcheries, thereby replacing the natural seasonality of the species and the ecosystems that depend upon that with bulk, man-made fish as a simulation. I don’t think it’s too much of a spolier alert to say that the only reason we need the hatcheries to simulate (and replace) the naturally occurring fish populations with farm-raised fish is because we’ve stolen their habitats with dammed rivers.

Artifishal focuses on the Klamath itself, and as Chris Wright of Outdoor Magazine noted in his review of the film at the time, “all humans need to do is get the hell out of the way and let Mother Nature work.”

I couldn’t agree more, Chris. As of this weekend, it seems Mother Nature is finally being allowed to do her work again on the Klamath.