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Breaching Dams is Key to Saving Salmon, Steelhead and Orcas by Coleen Anderson Yakama Herald, July 10, 2022

The treaties Northwest Tribes reluctantly signed almost 170 years ago guaranteed
the right of tribal citizens to fish, hunt and gather in their "usual and accustomed places."

During the decade of the 1990s, a baker's dozen of salmon and steelhead stocks in the Columbia Basin were listed under the Endangered Species Act as threatened or endangered species. For most of us then, human-driven climate change was a forecast or a prediction about the future.

But the fish were already in trouble.

Today, we live in a world where climate change is our inescapable reality -- drought, record-setting heat waves, unprecedented flooding -- the future is here.

And for salmon, steelhead and endangered salmon-dependent Southern Resident orcas, climate change adds threats beyond what was already driving them toward extinction.

Warming and more acidic oceans and disrupted oceanic currents are part of the story. The danger is even more pressing in our rivers and especially in the slackwater reservoirs behind our many dams.

Salmon and steelhead are cold-water fish. Water temperatures above 68 degrees F are unhealthy for smolts migrating downstream to the ocean and adults returning upriver to spawn. The higher the temperature and the more prolonged the exposure, the greater the likelihood that the consequences are outright lethal.

In 2015, low flows and hot water in the reservoirs killed 3,900 of the 4,000 endangered adult Snake River sockeye that passed Bonneville Dam; just 50 made it to their natal home in Idaho's Sawtooth Mountains on their own, while another 50 were trapped at Lower Granite Dam on the Snake and trucked to the Sawtooths.

These hot water episodes in the Snake and Columbia Rivers are increasing in duration, frequency and intensity. By 2080, most of the coldest, climate-resilient salmonid habitat in the Lower 48 states is forecast to be in the Snake River basin. Our changing climate is making a bad situation worse for Northwest salmon, steelhead and orcas. Restoring a free-flowing river by breaching the four dams on the lower Snake, the Snake River and its tributaries can serve as a stronghold for these fish.

While we work to slow, stop and eventually reverse the effects of climate change, in the here and now we also need to limit the harm done by the change that's already here and the additional change that's now inevitable. We need to make our human systems and our ecosystems as resilient as possible in the face of climate change. That's what restoration of a free-flowing lower Snake does. It provides the kinds of adaptation we need if iconic, irreplaceable creatures like salmon, steelhead and orcas are to survive.

We must confront climate change and take necessary steps toward adaptability and resilience, but in a way that promotes climate justice. The fate of salmon and steelhead is an issue crying out for climate justice.

Human-driven climate change threatens the livability of our planet for all humans, but the threat is gravest and most immediate for communities historically marginalized or disadvantaged.

The treaties Northwest Tribes reluctantly signed almost 170 years ago guaranteed the right of tribal citizens to fish, hunt and gather in their "usual and accustomed places." Those rights -- and, particularly, fishing rights -- have too often been compromised, ignored or outright violated.

Now climate change, on top of other challenges, threatens to render tribal fishing rights meaningless by the outright extinction of salmon and steelhead. As one tribal leader recently put it, "There's no fishing if there are no fish."

Breaching the lower Snake dams is an essential step if salmon, steelhead, and orcas are to not just survive, but thrive in a warming world. Indian Tribes across the Northwest are telling us, urgently and insistently, restoration of a free-flowing lower Snake is also necessary to deliver a measure of justice for the First Nations.

A public comment period ends Monday, and Sen. Patty Murray and Gov. Jay Inslee need to hear from you. This comment period provides a critical opportunity to express appreciation for their leadership and strong support for bold, urgent action to protect salmon from extinction. We expect a final report in mid-July and a roadmap for salmon recovery -- including a decision on whether to remove the dams -- by the end of July.