Thursday April 17, 2025
Cascade PBS —
Spill, which is now happening at each federal dam along the Columbia-Snake river system that has fish passage, allows out-migrating salmon to dodge the dams’ deadly turbines, increasing their survival rate and eventual returns.
But this year, in addition to battling hundreds of miles of near-still water, predators and a warming ocean, the roughly 6.6 million roughly pinky-finger-sized young fish also face a Trump administration that has attacked the notion of using the West’s rivers for anything but pure and immediate commercial gain.
Why spill?
“Before the dams were in place, there was a huge flood every spring and early summer of cold water that pushed tens of millions of salmon and steelhead juveniles out to the ocean,” said Joseph Bogaard, executive director of Save Our Wild Salmon.