Monday March 16, 2026
Field & Stream —
Recent radio monitoring shows that chinook salmon have reached stretches of the Upper Klamath River Basin—an area that anadromous fish have been absent from for over a century, according to a press release from the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife (ODFW). The news is an indication that dam removal efforts on the Klamath River are working as expected.
The Klamath is a 263-mile river that flows through the Cascade Mountains in southern Oregon and northern California. According to NOAA Fisheries, the river was once the third largest salmon-producing river on the West Coast, not to mention a famous steelhead fishery. But those anadromous fish runs suffered in large part from four hydroelectric dams that impacted water quality and impeded fish passage. Years of advocacy from a variety of stakeholders, including local Indigenous tribes, led to America’s largest dam removal; those four dams were demolished by September, 2024.