With Dams Removed, Salmon Will Have the Run of a Western River
www.nytimes.com
The nation’s largest dam removal project is nearly complete after a lengthy campaign by Native tribes to restore the river at the California-Oregon border.
  • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
    413·
    3 months ago

    It’s not just the loss of hydro power, it’s going to cut water availability upstream of the dams.

    They need to at least introduce a bunch of beaver to get that back, but I’d have loved to see one of those adaptions to help salmon past the dams instead of this. We can’t count on everything returning naturally to how it was 100 years ago before the dams.

    This sounds great, I just hope they thought it thru first.

    • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
      7·
      3 months ago

      There were a couple decades of thinking it through first. There’s a real history of all sorts of fish ladders and stuff not working adequately.

      We can’t get back exactly what we had — temperatures are higher now, and that affects evaporation and salmon, but this seems like the right decision in this location.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
        14·
        3 months ago

        Yeah. I’m just worried about the effects on surrounding vegetation and if increased dryness would make more fires, and allow them to spread further.

        I don’t think this spot is really that far away from where we’ve deployed beavers for that. And salmon can jump a beaver dam.

        Seems like the best option to mitigate downside of dam removal.