Friday July 1, 2022
Oregon State University —
Oregon State University researchers will embark in July on a 3½-year partnership with the Yurok Tribe to study what the connections between river quality, water use and the aquatic food web will look like after four Klamath River dams are dismantled.
“We want to fill in gaps in the Western science as well as gaps in how we make equitable decisions based on both ecological science and Indigenous knowledge,” said OSU’s Desiree Tullos, professor of water resource engineering and the project’s leader. “Our partnership with the Yurok Tribe aims to bring together multiple and complementary ways of understanding and making decisions about the Klamath system.”
The joint project with the Yurok Tribe is the first attempt to represent tribal knowledge in decision processes in the Klamath Basin, she said.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission along with the utility PacifiCorp and the states of California and Oregon are poised to sign off on the removal of the lower four dams on the Klamath River: the J.C. Boyle Dam in Oregon and the Copco 1, Copco 2 and Iron Gate dams in California.