The headwaters of the Klamath River are the ancestral territory of the Klamath Tribes, which include the Klamath, Modoc and Yahooskin, according to Tribal Chairman William Ray Jr. “(The water) comes right out of the ground. I know this because I see it. I’ve lived it. And I know where (the headwaters) come out of.” These waters fuse to create Klamath Lake in southern Oregon, out of which the Klamath River runs through Northern California to the Pacific Ocean. All these waters support the fish at the core of the economies, cuisine and medicine of the tribal communities throughout the watershed — including the Yurok Tribe, downstream where the river meets the Pacific.
In better times, salmon made up a third of the Klamath peoples’ diets. “Creator couldn’t have created a more powerful species,” said Ray, noting salmon’s ability to traverse fresh and saltwater alike. “He created this fish for all the Indians to enjoy.” A trade route called the Klamath Trail crossed what’s now called Oregon to connect with Celilo Falls, an ancient and now-submerged fishery and international trade hub on the Columbia River. The Klamath River, Ray said, was the third-largest salmon producer in the world. When a Klamath person got sick, they would retrieve the right type of fish from the best place — perhaps a c’waam or koptu from a specific bend in the lakeshore, or a certain kind of anadromous fish from the river — and eat the gills or boil the heads to make a medicinal broth.
But after dams degraded the rivers, salmon and other anadromous fish stopped returning to the upper basin. Lake-dwelling fish suffered, too, and the people of this land had to make some tough decisions. “We knew that there was something wrong beginning in the ’70s and especially the ’80s,” Ray said. “It didn’t take Western science to tell the Indian (with) Indigenous knowledge that something was drastically wrong.” The Klamath Tribes held some emotionally strained meetings, and in 1986, they made the tearful decision on their own to stop fishing. “It hurt us,” Ray said. “This was another issue that pecked away at our culture, the viability of it.”
The chairman paraphrased a Umatilla elder he’d once spoken to: “How can you build a tribal traditional economy on species that are endangered?” It’s not an abstract question for the tribes: When an elder is sick, for example, Ray might now have to tell them they can’t go down to the water and get a fish to heal themselves. “How do you say that to somebody? How?”
TODAY, HOWEVER, THINGS ARE MOVING in a more promising direction for the Klamath’s fish and the tribal cultures they support. Four outdated and underperforming hydroelectric dams on the lower Klamath River were removed in October 2024, and Pacific lamprey, steelhead, fall chinook salmon and other anadromous fish immediately began migrating back to the upper basin, which the dams had blocked off for over a century. About 20 coho salmon made it as far as Oregon before the end of the year, according to Jordan Ortega, who works as an anadromous fish specialist for the Klamath Tribes. “Almost all the anadromous species are responding favorably to dam removal,” Ortega told HCN. Just two dams remain in the upper Klamath River: the Kino Dam and the Link River Dam. Both have fish ladders, which are not optimal for every anadromous species, but are better than nothing.
Earlier this year, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, jointly offered a $5.9 million grant for tribal salmon restoration and called for tribes to apply for the competitive funding. Ray said the Klamath Tribes first learned of the opportunity from their downriver Yurok relatives. He immediately made some calls, including one to the governor’s office and another to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. The Klamath Tribes had already worked with the agency to develop a post-dam-removal plan for fish reintroduction and monitoring natural repopulation.
Ray quickly hit a roadblock, however: The BIA and NOAA grant, he said, was intended only for salmon restoration tribes. But because salmon had been extirpated from Klamath ancestral territory for 114 years, the federal government did not consider them a restoration tribe. This made the Klamath ineligible to apply — and Ray was aghast. “We’re trying to put salmon back into our territory, right? So how couldn’t we be a salmon tribe?”
Fortunately, the tribes’ downriver relatives had their back; Mike Belchik, the Yurok Tribe’s senior fisheries biologist, moved to assist. “First thing I did was contact Bureau of Indian Affairs and said, ‘Can you add Klamath Tribes to the list?’” Belchik said. According to Belchik, however, the BIA said it was too late in the process for that. (The BIA did not clarify how it determines which tribes are considered salmon restoration tribes, but said in an email that “this funding opportunity prioritized certain hatcheries that raise stocks of Pacific salmon.”) So the Yurok Tribe applied for the grant itself and invited the Klamath Tribes to piggyback on its application. The BIA awarded the grant jointly between the Yurok Tribe, the Klamath Tribes, and Oregon Fish and Wildlife. Belchik said the Yurok Tribe will act as a pass-through, sending the money to the Klamath Tribes and serving in an administrative capacity only.
“How couldn’t we be a salmon tribe?”
Some see the Yurok and Klamath Tribes as water-rights rivals, with the former trying to restore salmon in the lower basin while the latter want the same water to save c’waam and koptu up north. But Belchik says their relationship has never been competitive. “Our council, our leadership, pledged to help the Klamath Tribes in any way they could,” he said. “We made a promise to them. When this funding opportunity came up, that’s who we thought of.” After all, as he said, both tribal nations would benefit from an expanded run of spring chinook.
“We have pushed, as have the Klamath Tribes, for the treatment of the entire basin as an ecosystem of which all parts are important,” Belchik explained. “It’s heartfelt,” he added. “My direction from council is to make that real.”
“THIS GRANT IS SUPPORTING the expansion and use of what’s called remote site incubators,” Ortega explained. Remote site incubators are sets of panels, each set about the size of a salmon redd, that sit in the water and mimic the conditions necessary to support a few thousand fertilized eggs, protecting them from predation and other threats. “The goal is to establish these remote site incubators across a wide range of thermal and flow regimes. That way there’s as much life-history diversity as possible.” (“Life-history diversity,” he added, is a feature of chinook salmon’s evolutionary strategy. “That just means that they do a lot of different things to achieve the same goal.”)
Typically, salmon return to spawn where they were born, with only about 5% seeking out other territory opportunities. After the dams were removed, however, the Klamath fish left that number in the dust: Out of 60,000 to 70,000 returning fish, Ortega said, 13,000 migrated past the former dam sites. “So we’re talking about a much larger fraction than you typically see in the literature.”
When the Klamath Tribes tested the remote site incubators with 10,000 fertilized eggs they received from the Trinity River Hatchery, they achieved a hatch-success rate of over 99%.
Just last month, the first spring chinook in over a century returned to the upper basin. Ortega said that, so far, most of these returning salmon have been fall run chinook. Spring chinook, which are widely considered to be the most flavorful salmon, are more narrowly distributed: “Their stronghold is in the lower basin, in the Trinity River and in the Salmon River, which is pretty close to the ocean,” Ortega said. Additionally, they simply have a smaller population size than fall chinook. So “springers,” as they’re known, need a little bit more of a boost to get to the upper basin, which is what the incubators are for.
Ray noted that many non-Native locals have long denied that salmon historically populated the upper basin. “There’s a lot of naysayers all over the place saying that we trucked them around the dams and that they were never here. Well, they’re here,” Ray said. “We have fought so hard since 1909 to get our salmon back, and now the people that see them in the basin, and are non-Indians, now they want to fish them.” Ray said he recently overheard people talking about it in a restaurant, apparently unaware of the irony: “They said, ‘Do you know how awesome it is to have these salmon back? We can’t wait to fish them.’ Well, wait a minute. Let’s back up here a minute. This is a treaty protected resources under the Treaty of 1864,” Ray told HCN. “We’re the one that’s been harmed here.”
But at least it’s finally clear that Klamath territory is indeed salmon territory, Ray said. “It’s a blessing by Creator, because now it’s undeniable.” Belchik noted that the “ultimate purpose of dam removal, whether you’re talking fall or spring or steelhead or anything, is that there’s a harvestable surplus for all.”
“Everybody’s excited about the return of the fish and what that could ultimately mean,” said Phil Milburn, wildlife biologist at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. “But we are probably years away from having even initial discussions about harvest, because the goal is re-establishment of these species in Oregon.” The tribes will install the new remote site incubators next year, with adult springers expected to return as early as 2030.
Ray noted that it’s only possible to restore the Klamath watershed because the area lacks a large municipality. “There’s an opportunity for us to set a new standard, to show America that we can restore, as humans, a watershed that’s been degraded for the last 100-plus years.” He’s proud that tribal nations are leading the effort. “There’s a lot of positive things going on, and we’re fighting like heck,” said Ray. “We have to be very speedy. We have to have all cylinders going.”
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