Tuesday August 18, 2026
Trout Unlimited —
After over two decades of advocacy, negotiation and engineering, the four dams blocking the Klamath River came down over the course of 2023 – 2024. With the final barrier breached in September 2024, within weeks Chinook salmon were found in tributaries above the former dam sites.
Since then, the fish have astounded biologists by quickly migrating through Keno Dam, the Link River Dam and Upper Klamath Lake to reach headwater streams like the Sprague, Wood and Williamson Rivers. Monitoring by the Klamath Tribes and Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) has confirmed that juvenile salmon are migrating out of these tributaries, profound evidence that salmon are successfully spawning in these portions of the watershed for the first time in over a century.
While fall Chinook have had the most dramatic return to the basin since dam removal, coho salmon and steelhead have been documented above the former dams, too, and reintroduced spring Chinook smolts have been found moving downstream through the system on their way to the Pacific Ocean. Astoundingly, a spring Chinook adult was recently documented above Upper Klamath Lake as well.