What happened to Washington's wildlife after the largest dam removal in US history

[BilletHead]

What happened to Washington's wildlife after the largest dam removal in US history (engadget.com)

 

[Quillback]

It's great that they took out the Elwha dams, but after watching salmon recovery efforts for years in the PNW, you always have to factor in netting.  When the Elwha dams came out there was already contention over who would harvest the fish even before a single salmon reached the upper river.  Wild Chinook salmon fillets run $25 or more retail per pound, it is hard to keep people from catching them with that kind of payoff.  Chinook from the Puget Sound rivers spend their adult lives off the Alaska coast and when they migrate home, they face commercial harvest off the coasts of Alaska and BC, plus recreational harvest.  You can have the greatest habitat possible in the rivers, but you still need salmon to make it to the spawning gravel.

I hope that sometime in the future it all works out and the salmon and steelhead runs return to where they were years ago.