Removing the dams from the Klamath River is a step toward justice for Native Americans in Northern California

The Klamath River flows over 250 miles (400 kilometers) from southern Oregon to the Pacific Ocean in northern California. It flows through the steep, rugged Klamath Mountains, past hillsides of redwoods, spruces, tanoaks, and madrones, and along pebble beaches where willow trees shade the river’s edge. Closer to its mouth at Requa, the trees that rise above the river are often covered in fog.

The Klamath is central to the worldviews, history and identity of several native nations. From its sources in the lands of Klamath, Modoc and Yahooskin-Paiute, it flows through the lands of Shasta, Karuk, Hupa and Yurok. The Yurok tribe legally recognized the personality of the river.

Historically, the Klamath was the third largest producing Pacific salmon river on the West Coast. The river supported abundant and diverse streams of native fish, including Chinook and coho salmon, rainbow trout, Pacific lamprey, green sturgeon, eulachon smelt, and coastal cutthroat trout. Most of the Klamath in California has been designated Wild and Scenic since 1981 as the highest level of protection for free flowing rivers.

The people and fish of the Klamath River have been interconnected for millennia. But dams and irrigation systems built before the 1960s along with other pressures, such as logging, mining and overexploitation have separated fish from their breeding habitats and indigenous cultures from sacred fish.

Recognizing this damage, state, federal and tribal agencies are now removing four of Klamaths six dams to allow fish to migrate further upriver to historic habitats. The projected completion date is 2024. This $450 million project is the largest dam removal in the world.

The removal of the dams has catalyzed the ecological rebound in other rivers, including the Elwha in Washington state and the Kennebec and Penobscot in Maine. As scholars working in Native American studies and freshwater ecology, we see the removal of the Klamath Dam as an opportunity to right historical wrongs, improve depleted native fish populations, and strengthen understanding of the relationships between fish and indigenous peoples.

People, fish and infrastructure

The resident fish of Upper Klamath are highly endemic, meaning they are found nowhere else in the world. They represent a unique collection of species from an ancient river that historically flowed in the Great Basin, a swathe of drylands through present-day Nevada and western Utah before connecting to the lower Klamath River about 1.8 million years ago. Many fish, especially chinook salmon, steelhead, and coho salmon, migrated to or near the headwaters of the Klamath River each year to spawn.

As early as 1895, hydroelectric operations began to change the hydrology of Klamaths. In the early 1900s, several small regional hydroelectric companies combined to form California Oregon Power Co., or Copco, and the United States Bureau of Reclamation began developing water storage and diversion projects.

White settlers in California had already been violently trying to uproot Native Americans since the mid-1800s. The construction of the dam ushered in a new phase of attempted removal for tribes whose lives and cultures centered along rivers. Agricultural communities and logging companies have encroached on the ancestral lands of the Yurok and Karuk peoples.

Fishing in decline

Permitting processes in the heyday of western damming did not consider impacts on indigenous nations or fisheries. The construction of Copco 1 stopped all fish migration to the upper reaches of the Klamaths beginning in 1912. Subsequently, Copco 2, JC Boyle and Iron Gate dams further shortened fish migrations, cutting off access to approximately 400 miles (650 kilometres) of productive egg-laying and ranching habitat. None of these dams included passage systems to help fish access upstream habitats.

Today, wild spring Chinooks are largely absent from the reservoir, except for a small population associated with the Salmon River and another population released from a hatchery on the Trinity River. Wild Spring Chinooks are down 98% from historical baselines.

Fall Chinooks still return to the basin in moderate to small numbers, in part because two hatcheries on the Klamath produce and release up to 12 million young annually. According to a 2002 estimate, between 20,000 and 40,000 wild fall-stock Chinook salmon return from the ocean each year, up from approximately 500,000 historically.

Other fish native to the Klamath Basin are also in serious decline. Coho salmon, shortnose sucker, Lost River sucker, bull trout, and euchalon are all federally listed as threatened or endangered. Conservationists have petitioned regulators to list other species, including chinooks, steelheads, and spring lampreys.

Impacts on Tribal Nations

Development in the Klamath Basin pitted agricultural interests against tribal and fish nations, particularly during drought years. Lack of fish passage systems and lower river flows have contributed to fish decline and disease.

Losing salmon along the Klamath is traumatic for native nations, who see fish as a cultural and spiritual cornerstone. For them, working to remove dams and protect salmon is a commitment and a responsibility.

As tribe member Yurok Brook Thompson, a restoration engineer, put it in a recent article:

My people have lived on the Klamath for thousands of years and I know that today’s salmon are the descendants of those handled by my ancestors. These salmon are a direct link to my ancestors, the physical representation of their love for me. Salmon are my relatives.

Tribes have a legal right to protect their fisheries and ultimately their cultural survival. In Western water law, rights often follow a first-in-time logic, meaning that the first party to claim or appropriate the water has the right to it. According to the Winters Doctrine, established in a 1908 Supreme Court ruling, tribal water rights date back to the dates the reservations were created.

The Klamath River Reservoir was established primarily for Yurok on the lower Klamath in 1855, well before the upstream water development. Upstream, the lands were recognized for the Klamath tribes in 1864.

In 1954 Congress revoked federal recognition for the Klamath tribe. Three decades later, however, in US v. Adair in 1983, the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit recognized that the tribe retained sufficient water rights to protect its treaty-guaranteed hunting and fishing rights on the former reservation land.

A state quantifying process affirmed in 2012 and reaffirmed in 2021 that tribes had senior water rights in the upper Klamath Basin. The federal government is responsible for securing in-stream flows that will support the fishing rights of the Klamath tribes, as well as agricultural deliveries to upstream farmers whose rights generally date back to the establishment of the federal Klamath Project in 1906.

Downstream, a series of court cases and a 1993 legal opinion from the Department of the Interior affirmed the fishing rights of Yurok and Hoopa. Tribes have legal priority, both upstream and downstream.

Welcoming salmon home

The removal of the dams will begin to address the terms of the 2019 Yurok Tribes Resolution 19-40, which recognizes the rights of the Klamath River itself to exist, thrive and evolve naturally; have a clean and healthy environment free of pollutants; have a stable climate free from the impacts of man-made climate change and the right of the tribes to protect the Klamath River, its ecosystem and species for the continuation of the Yurok people and tribe for future generations.

Removing the dams will encourage native and endemic fish to return to the upper basin and access important breeding and breeding habitats. Responses from fish populations are likely to vary, particularly during the first few years after removal.

However, salmon and trout have evolved to migrate upriver and access important headwater spawning and farming habitats. Making this possible will support the long-term recovery of these ecologically and culturally important species.

It will also promote the recovery of the lands and ways of life of indigenous peoples. In the words of Yurok Brook Thompsons Restoration Engineer, “We are all focused on finding ways to bring our salmon back home and create healthy lives for them.” Creating a healthy life for salmon is about creating a healthy life for us as people.