The federal government can redirect water from a Northern California dam to prevent mass die-offs of salmon in drought years, water that otherwise would be shipped to Central Valley farmers, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation had authority under a 1955 federal law to release Trinity River water from the … Read more
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation ramped up flows on the lower Klamath River on Friday morning in an attempt to reduce the risk of threatened fish from contracting a deadly parasite as had occurred in years past. The move came just over a day after a federal judge found that the bureau’s past dam operations … Read more
A federal judge today ruled that federal regulators must push more water down the Klamath River in order to combat a deadly parasite that kills juvenile salmon in the springtime. Specifically, Judge William H. Horrick ruled that the federal Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the dams and diversions on the river, must provide two sorts … Read more
Two federal agencies are the target of a second lawsuit alleging they violated the Endangered Species Act by allowing up to 90 percent of juvenile Klamath River coho salmon to become infected by an intestinal parasite in 2014 and 2015. “Rather than taking action to improve river conditions to recover endangered coho salmon, NOAA Fisheries … Read more
Our metal powerboat is puttering near a bend low in the Klamath River. Morning fog pours off the hills against a flat gray sky, but we can see a fight up around a bird’s nest. “The eagles are perched up here in the tree,” says Mike Belchik, a fisheries biologist for the Yurok tribe, whose … Read more
Five reasons dam removal still makes sense: safety, harmful impacts to fish populations, dams make us more vulnerable to sea level rise, dam removal makes financial sense, and there are far better ways to supply water.