Salmon's comeback pits nature against the Trump regime

The administration is using illegal cuts and sleight of hand to divert water to farmers and away from tribes

- JACQUES LESLIE CONTRIBUTING WRITER

GINA FERAZZI Los Angeles Times CHINOOK salmon, Coho salmon and steelhead trout are measured on a Klamath feeder creek.

FOR THE FIRST TIME in more than a century, migrating salmon have climbed close to the headwaters of the Klamath River’s most far-flung tributaries, as much as 360 miles from the Pacific Ocean in south-central Oregon.

The achievement is the clearest indication yet that the world’s largest dam removal project, completed on the river a year ago, will yield major benefits for salmon, the river ecosystem, and the tribes and commercial fishers whose lives revolve around the fish.

“I’m thrilled,” said Jeff Mitchell, a former chairman of the Klamath Tribes and a key participant in the long-running protests and negotiations that culminated in the dam removal project. “It’s been gratifying — 25 years of my life and all the thousands of thousands of miles and thousands of hours of sitting in meetings and protesting and doing whatever we had to do to move this forward. Now that’s in the past and I’m watching history unfold in front of my eyes. It’s amazing to know that these fish have finally made it home.”

Unfortunately, every positive development in the embattled Klamath basin seems to come with a catch, and the catch this time is ominous: The Trump administration has shown disregard for the salmons’ well-being, cutting already allocated funding for needed ongoing river restoration, fish-monitoring and fire-prevention projects, and firing the federal officials who helped facilitate them.