After being absent for more than a century, Chinook salmon have returned to their historic spawning grounds at the headwaters of the Klamath River in Oregon.
Oregon wildlife officials said this month that the fish had made it past a key milestone, a long lake, and had reached the tributary streams that make up the river’s headwaters.
The announcement came roughly a year after the last of four major hydroelectric dams on the Klamath was demolished. The dams had blocked salmon and other fish from traveling upriver. They were removed in 2023 and 2024, the culmination of decades of efforts by Native American groups — including the Yurok, Karuk and Klamath tribes — along with environmental organizations, anglers and others.
“It was both a blessing and filled with remorse,” said William E. Ray, Jr., chairman of the Klamath tribes. Many people had “fought hard all those decades” for the restoration effort, he said, and would not see the results. But, he added, “it was also very joyous.”
The Klamath River runs about 260 miles from its headwaters in south-central Oregon to the northern California coast, emptying into the Pacific near the town of Klamath. For thousands of years, it had robust populations of salmon, trout and other migratory fish that are central to the diets and cultures of the tribes that live along its banks.
By the early 1900s, settlers were eyeing the river for its irrigation and hydropower potential. The four dams recently removed were built between 1912 and 1962. They, along with smaller dams, canals and water diversions, blocked the passage of fish and altered the river habitat. Populations of Chinook salmon, historically the most abundant fish in the Klamath, dwindled to near zero and disappeared completely upriver from the dams.
“These fisheries made up half our diet” and were important for medicines, Mr. Ray said. Losing the salmon “pecked away at the tribes’ viability, our ability to exercise and protect our living culture.”
Demolition on the last dam was completed in October of 2024. Just days later, salmon were swimming upstream, passing through the former dam sites and heading for Upper Klamath Lake, the last stop before the smaller tributary streams where they would spawn.
But a few obstacles remained, and biologists weren’t sure the salmon could get around them. Several remaining dams had fish ladders, the ascending artificial pools and falls meant to help fish bypass dams and other infrastructure on their way upstream. But they were built decades ago, not to modern specifications, and designed for trout, not salmon.
Scientists rushed to get equipment in place to track the progress of the salmon and see whether they could navigate the old ladders. As scientists were installing the cameras in late September this year, salmon were already swimming through.
“That was incredible,” said Mark Hereford, a project lead for the restoration effort with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
One of those cameras captured a Chinook salmon leaping up one of those older fish ladders, providing the first documentation of the salmons’ progress upriver. Scientists then equipped some fish with trackable radio tags as they passed through the fish ladders.
The tagged fish proved to be pioneers. The trackers revealed that by mid-October, a few dozen salmon had swum roughly 30 miles through Upper Klamath Lake and reached tributaries of the Klamath, considered the river’s headwaters. One year after the last of the dams came down, salmon are spreading throughout the uppermost reaches of the river.
“We were ecstatic,” Mr. Hereford said. “We didn’t know how long it would take. But to have them up here a year and a couple weeks since the last dam’s removal is pretty incredible.”
Scientists have been cruising the tributaries on paddle boards, counting salmon. They estimate, conservatively, that at least 140 adult fish are spawning in the tributaries as of late October.
It will very likely take years for the salmon to fully recover. Water quality in the Upper Klamath is a concern. Agricultural runoff has polluted the watershed with phosphorus, rendering some water bodies unsafe for drinking or swimming. And a network of irrigation canals threatens to divert fish away from tributaries.
Funding is also a question mark. The Klamath tribes and other groups involved in the restoration work have received millions of dollars from the federal government, but recent delays and grant cancellations have created uncertainty around what work will be able to proceed.
The Klamath tribes, for instance, had more than $3.1 million in funding from the U.S. government promised to help with restoration efforts, including the installation of screens to prevent salmon from ending up in irrigation canals.
“That’s been tied up since November of 2024,” Mr. Ray said. “And that’s not just for the hard restoration work. That’s also for our crew of tribal members who rely on that for their jobs and their income.”
But after so many decades without salmon in the Klamath River, the tribes are celebrating the conservation success. “This is a renewal of our culture that we’ve had for thousands of years,” Mr. Ray said.
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