The Yurok on Reopening the Klamath River to Salmon

Bowers heads up river above Requa. Photo by Mike Wier

A Perspective

Will Bowers was eight when he witnessed a massive fish kill on the Klamath River. It was 2002 and Bowers and his family, members of the Yurok Tribe, had traveled six or so miles upriver, by boat—the only way to access a broad stretch of the Klamath River’s unspoiled wilderness—to the family’s small fishing cabin. These ancestral fishing grounds had for thousands of years provided sustenance for the tribe (the largest in California, with more than 6,000 members) and its neighbors, the Hupa and Karuk, whose culture also depends on the river and its fish. 

The river here runs wide and clear through stands of redwoods, giant conifers, and prehistoric fern. “I was just a little guy, and excited to start fishing,” Bowers says. “I saw all these salmon and steelhead swimming five feet out in the river, which was exciting. Then I saw a steelhead start swimming by, flop over, and die. Then another fish, a big chinook, flopped over and died. I started looking around, and all I saw were big white bellies floating down the river.”

Yurok Tribe member, Will Bowers. Photo by Mike Wier

There was little question what killed tens of thousands of salmon and steelhead that year: dams. Six months earlier the Bush administration agreed to increase diversion from the Klamath to irrigate farmers’ fields in the Klamath basin. Six dams built between 1918 and 1962 had for decades choked the river, causing toxic blue-green algae blooms and blocking salmon from migrating upriver to spawn. Overfishing, logging, mining, and agriculture had already taken its toll on the river and its precious salmon and steelhead populations. The fish kill was a crippling blow to an ecosystem that had been struggling for over 100 years.

In the years following the fish kill, the Yurok people struggled mightily with the decline of salmon and steelhead populations, which dropped to zero above the dams and less than 5 percent of their historic numbers below it. Though the tribes had signed treaties allowing them to fish the waters in perpetuity, the federal government closed their commercial fisheries. When they attempted to enforce the bans Yuroks, including Bowers’s family members, refused to stand down; federal officers denied their fishing rights, recalling a period in the 1970s when officers in riot gear beat tribe members trying to fish the river. (“My father always told me that being on the river is our church,” Bowers says.)

With the shutdown of their commercial salmon fisheries, the Klamath region tribes became some of the most impoverished groups in California. One study found they suffered high rates of diabetes and heart disease, linking these health issues to lack of access to fresh salmon, which once made up almost half their daily calories.

The Klamath tribal people and organizations like CalTrout, CA Trout Unlimited, and many others kept fighting. Bowers’s sister, Amy Cardalis, became a lawyer, then became part of a movement to take the tribe’s fight to the courts (a movement that won at the U.S. Supreme Court, twice). Over the next two decades, tribal victories and state-level advocacy pushed PacifiCorp, which owns the dams, to decide to remove them rather than update them as required by the EPA.

“You know what?” Bowers says of his tribal people. “It would’ve been pretty easy to stand down, to say ‘I give up.’ But they didn’t.”

Thanks to those victories Bowers is now smiling when talking about fishing the Klamath. After final regulatory approval in 2022, four dams—the JC Boyle, Copco 1, Copco 2, and Iron Gate—have been removed. (The final two dams, both in Oregon, have fish ladders that allow salmon to progress upriver.) It’s the largest dam removal project in American history, decades in the making, now nearly complete.

Bowers and other Yuroks have been taking part in dismantling the dams that once choked the river. Bowers is a project manager with the Yurok Construction Corporation, a company owned and staffed by Yurok people, which has been instrumental in the removal of four of the river’s dams to free 240 miles of the river. The company has been busy. “We have about eight restoration projects doing this summer,” Bowers says. The company hired seven more tribal members in 2024 so far, up to a total of roughly 35.

The river restoration work is one of the fastest growing sectors for blue-collar jobs in the region. “People are starting to understand the whole line of it,” Bowers says. “It’s a movement of restoration, instead of devastating everything.”

The company has helped with a number of dam removal projects, including removing the Copco 2 dam in Ward’s Canyon. “That was insane,” Bowers says. The dam had effectively de-watered the canyon after it was built in 1925. Bowers and his crew chainsawed “choker trees” that had grown in the dry canyon, then called in a helicopter to fly them out of the canyon bottom. With the dam removed, the Klamath runs through the canyon once more, for the first time in almost 100 years. 

The group is also completing a large multi-phase restoration of Prairie Creek, an important tributary nearby that serves as vital habitat for young steelhead and salmon. At several ponds in Prairie Creek that the company helped build, tagged coho salmon fry have been tracked heading back out to the ocean, returning to the Klamath estuary, then running back to the sea and all the way to Eureka Bay, before returning to the Prairie Creek ponds. The fish, along with Chinook salmon, are “staying way longer than we expected,” says Michael Wier, videographer and media reporter for CalTrout.

“People are feeling good. Giving something back to the environment, the fish, the water — that is what we are meant to do as a Yurok people.”

“There is a movement underway,” Wier says. “Hopefully this is the tip of the spear as dam removal for restoration. There is no price you can put on ecological services. We are turning the Klamath back into a wild river, a sanctuary for salmonids, and a sanctuary for the human spirit.”

Bowers describes partaking in a traditional dance recently along the river with members of his tribe this year. He was overcome with a sense of return. “The Klamath, Prairie Creek—the places we are working are all our ancestral turf,” Bowers says. “That part of restoration gives everyone meaning. A lot of our tribal members have lived really hard lives. When they’re able to do this restoration work, they see that meaning again. It’s providing a healthier community.  People are feeling good. Giving something back to the environment, the fish, the water—that is what we are meant to do as a Yurok people.”

There is still work ahead to free the Klamath. Indigenous people have been planting dried reservoir beds with millions of native plants and seeds, restoring the health of the riverbank. Dam removal work continues; recently, removal work at the Iron Gate dam released sedimentation downstream that caused turbidity issues and some fish kills. Though this turbidity was an expected side effect, locals against the dam removal and several regional papers have published misinformation, claiming the process has made the river unsafe. (Not true.) 

The turbidity, Bowers said, has kept the water a little cooler, and has not harmed salmon or steelhead. “The fish are flying up the river,” he says. The salmon run for fall Chinook are the biggest he’s seen in the last 20 years. “Give it a year,” he says. “It’s gonna be amazing.”

“I can’t wait to see it when it’s healthy,” Bowers said. “I can’t wait till the fish come back. I can’t wait to show my kids that time. I want them to be proud of me, to be able to say, ‘My dad helped the fish get back.’ I’m ready for that moment.” 

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