Every fall, Barry McCovey, a member of the Yurok Tribe and director of tribal fisheries, takes his four children salmon fishing on the Klamath River, the second largest river in California.
A strong salmon run normally nets his family 30 or 40 fish. It’s a supply big enough to last them all year: They freeze, smoke and can the salmon to serve either on its own or on sandwiches and crackers.
But this year, the predicted salmon run was the second lowest since detailed records began in 1978, and the fall fishing season was cancelled.
The river’s salmon population has declined due to myriad factors, but the biggest culprit is believed to be a series of dams built along the river from 1918 to 1962, cutting off fish migration routes.
Now, after decades of Indigenous advocacy, four of the structures are being demolished as part of the largest dam removal project in United States history. In November, crews finished removing the first of the four dams as part of a push to restore 644 kilometres (400 miles) of fish habitat.
“Dam removal is the largest single step that we can take to restore the Klamath River ecosystem,” McCovey told Al Jazeera. “We’re going to see benefits to the ecosystem and then, in turn, to the fishery for decades and decades to come.”
The decades-long fight for dam removal began with a devastating fish kill.
For thousands of years, the Klamath River has been a cornerstone of Yurok culture, providing its people with a bounty of chinook salmon, coho salmon and steelhead trout.
But starting in the 20th century, the dams interrupted the river’s flow, pooling the water into reservoirs for use in hydroelectric power and farm irrigation.
Reservoirs, however, can cause the water to stagnate, warm and lose oxygen, according to McCovey. Those conditions, in turn, degrade the water quality and increase the spread of parasites that kill fish.
That threat ballooned into a crisis in 2002. Drought had racked the region, and farmers were pushing for more water for crops like potatoes and alfalfa. Some even wore ribbons and pins, denouncing the water restrictions as a form of “rural genocide”, threatening farmers’ livelihoods.
Facing pressure, the US Bureau of Reclamation diverted more water from the dams to agriculture.
But that decision left river levels low. Soon, adult salmon were washing up dead, their gills brown with dead tissue and spotted from parasitic infections.
Critics estimate as many as 70,000 salmon perished as diseases spread through the population.
It was a turning point. The 2002 fish kill prompted tribes like the Yurok to spring into action to protect the river ecosystem and their way of life.