<
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/26/salmon-dams-trump-admnistration-oregon-washington>
"A federal judge in Oregon sided with salmon against the Trump administration
on Wednesday, ordering the federal government to change hydropower system
operations long considered at the heart of native fish populations’ sharp
decline.
At the center of the dispute are eight dams and reservoirs on the Columbia and
Snake Rivers in the Pacific north-west that have created devastating obstacles
for salmon and steelhead unable to breach their deadly turbines or navigate
through the large, warm, artificial pools. The federal agencies and their
supporters, which include a group of utilities, water managers and farming
organizations, argued that reservoir drawdown would put power reliability in
peril.
Legal battles waged for decades over the harms were paused in 2021 as
stakeholders – which include the states of Oregon and Washington, four Native
American tribes and a coalition of conservation and fishing groups – began
working with the Biden administration on a solution.
In the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement, a landmark salmon recovery plan
brokered in late 2023, the federal government committed more than $1bn over a
decade to support depleted salmon runs and new investments into clean energy
projects in the area to replace the hydropower generated by the dams. The plan,
however, would be short-lived.
Months after returning to office, Trump withdrew from the agreement, calling it
“radical environmentalism”, and the parties quickly returned to court.
But in a strongly worded ruling, issued late on Wednesday, the Oregon US
district court judge Michael Simon rebuked the administration’s position and
the “disappointing history of government avoidance and manipulation instead of
sincere efforts at solving the problem”, and the evidence presented, which he
said was created for the lawsuit and contradicted the scientific record.
In a report issued under Biden in 2024 and removed from public access by the
Trump administration, the Department of the Interior acknowledged that the dams
inflicted harm on the river and the Native American tribes that depend on it.
Construction of the dams at the turn of the 20th century transformed riparian
ecosystems and devastated salmon runs, flooded villages and burial grounds, and
pushed tribal members from their lands, traditions, culture and food sources.
The Columbia River basin, which sprawls across a swath of land the size of
Texas, once produced more salmon than any other system in the world. But out of
the 16 stocks of salmon and steelhead that once thrived here, seven are listed
under the
Endangered Species Act and four have already been wiped from
existence."
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
