Klamath River

Biologists from Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and The Klamath Tribes have discovered several salmon in a tributary of the Klamath River in Oregon, above the site of four dams that were removed earlier this year.

The largest dam removal project in U.S. history was completed Wednesday, marking a major victory for tribes in the region who fought for decades to free hundreds of miles of the Klamath River near the California-Oregon border.

The process at Iron Gate and Copco No. 1 will allow water to flow freely in its historic channel, giving salmon a passageway to key swaths of habitat just in time for the fall chinook spawning season.

Construction crews blasted a hole in the Copco No. 1 dam on Tuesday. It’s the final dam of four that will be removed in the hydroelectric reach of the Klamath River this year.

The Klamath dam removal is uncovering painful history for the Shasta Indian Nation. But the tribe’s leaders also see a chance to recover some of their lost lands, restoring ceremony, language, and community in the process.

Rafting the Upper Klamath River is possible through the summer thanks to releases of water from the J.C. Boyle Dam, which will be removed next year. When guides return to the Upper Klamath in 2025, this stretch of the river will be forever changed.

For over a century, four hydroelectric dams along the Oregon-California border have cut off habitat to fish swimming up the Klamath River from the ocean. Now, researchers are in the midst of a project to learn how fish will use this ecosystem once the dams are removed.

Restoration contractor Resource Environmental Solutions and area tribes will plant up to 19 billion native seeds as the Klamath Dams come out and reservoirs are drained.

The order is the last major regulatory step before four dams can be decommissioned. It marks the start of the largest dam removal project in U.S. history.

It’s not every day that the governors of Oregon and California, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, the head of a major power company, and representatives…

Groundwater levels in Oregon’s Klamath Basin have dropped as much as 25-feet in the past fifteen years. A new report shows there is a relationship between…

Drought is creating problems in river systems all around the Northwest. Nowhere is this more evident than on the Klamath River in Southern Oregon and…