More than 20,000 chinook salmon have migrated up the Klamath River in the two years since the largest dam removal in U.S. history, reoccupying 88 percent of their historical range above the former dam sites — a recovery researchers say arrived far faster than expected, even as water conflicts, disease, and drought continue to threaten the same river system. [1][2]
The last of four dams — J.C. Boyle, Copco 1, Copco 2, and Iron Gate — came out in August 2024, ending more than a century in which salmon could not reach cold, spring-fed habitat in the upper Klamath basin. A study published this week in the Nature-affiliated journal Scientific Reports, led by CalTrout's Damon Goodman alongside the Karuk, Klamath, and Yurok Tribes and state and federal agencies, used high-resolution sonar near the former Iron Gate site to count the returning fish. An estimated 7,742 chinook passed the site in fall 2024, followed by 13,310 in fall 2025 — together representing roughly a fifth of the entire Klamath basin's annual salmon return. [2] Some fish reached Beatty Gap on the Sprague River, more than 360 river miles from the ocean and 4,101 feet in elevation, the farthest upstream point on record for Klamath salmon. Coho salmon, steelhead, and Pacific lamprey have also pushed into the newly opened habitat. [2] "The biological response has been much faster than I, and most of us, expected," Goodman said. "We expected salmon to eventually recolonize habitat above the former dams, but within two years we've seen thousands of Chinook salmon moving into the upper basin and spawning across an enormous portion of their historic range." [1]
The numbers carry real weight because of what preceded them. In 2002, low water levels and dam-warmed reservoirs killed more than 30,000 fish on the Klamath — the largest salmon kill in U.S. history — and helped launch the decades-long, tribally led campaign that eventually removed the dams. Populations on the river had fallen more than 90 percent from historic levels before removal began. [1]
But two dams remain, and they expose the limits of what removal alone accomplished. The federal Bureau of Reclamation still operates the Link River and Keno dams below Klamath Lake as part of the Klamath Project, an irrigation system serving more than 240,000 acres of farmland. The Keno dam was never designed for salmon passage and does not meet federal fish-passage standards: zero fall-run salmon were confirmed passing through it in 2024, and only 2,497 were recorded by camera in 2025, with just 210 continuing through the Link River dam into Upper Klamath Lake itself. [1] "I think a lot of people think that the removal of those dams created an entirely dam-free, free-flowing river condition," said Mark Bransom, chief executive of the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, which oversaw the PacifiCorp dam removals. "And that's true for a large part of the river, but it's not the complete story." [1]
Water allocation remains the sharper fight. In June, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that the Bureau of Reclamation has discretion to release water for endangered salmon and sucker fish ahead of long-standing agricultural contracts — a ruling the Klamath Water Users Association is seeking to have reviewed. "This is not about farmers versus fish... but how it is applied," said Elizabeth Nielsen, the association's executive director. [1] Amy Cordalis, an attorney for the Yurok Tribe with Ridges to Riffles Indigenous Conservation Group, described the minimum flows the ruling protects as "akin to life support for humans... We're just trying to move back into balance." [1]
This year's water conditions tested that balance directly. Low snowpack and drought forced the Bureau to cut spring flows, and an outbreak of the parasite Ceratonova shasta — worsened by low flows and high temperatures — killed hundreds of juvenile hatchery chinook released at what one Karuk biologist called "a very unfavorable time." Wild fall-run salmon largely avoided it by migrating earlier. Separately, curtailed water at the Tule Lake refuge produced a botulism outbreak that killed 13,730 birds, and endangered Upper Klamath Lake suckers continue to decline. Spring-run chinook, an ecotype that needs cold water to hold over through summer, have not returned at all. [1] "Removing the dams did not remove climate risk," Goodman said. [1]
George Pess, a former NOAA fisheries scientist now leading the Portland-based nonprofit Conservation Angler, put the caution most plainly: "It's not a magic bullet. There are still plenty of issues with the Klamath. It's not going to be a linear ascent to recovery." [1] The Karuk Tribe made a similar point in June, after the disease outbreak first surfaced. "Dam removal gave the Klamath River and our fish a fighting chance," said Vice Chairman Kenneth Brink. "But no one should confuse dam removal with an instant cure. The river was damaged for more than a century. It will take time, strong winter flows, habitat restoration, and continued care to bring it back to health." [3]
Twenty thousand returning salmon and a river still fighting over its own water are not contradictory facts. They are the same recovery, described honestly from two different distances.
-- DARA OSEI, London