After historic dam removal, salmon return to Williamson and Sprague rivers in Southern Oregon

After more than 100 years, Chinook salmon have made it to areas above Upper Klamath Lake in Southern Oregon. Earlier this month, a radio-tagged adult salmon was detected in the Williamson River and others were found in tributaries on the west side of Upper Klamath Lake and in the Sprague River.

The return of salmon follows the largest river restoration project in U.S. history. The removal of four dams in Southern Oregon and Northern California was completed last year. Adult salmon swam more than 200 miles from the ocean to the Oregon side of the Klamath Basin for the first time since 1912.

The Klamath Tribes said the fish need time and protection to thrive again. We hear more from William Ray Jr., the chairman of the Klamath Tribes.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. It has been more than 100 years since Chinook salmon swam from the Pacific Ocean all the way up to areas above Upper Klamath Lake in Southern Oregon. Now, some of them have finally come back. Earlier this month, an adult salmon was detected in the Williamson River. Others were found in tributaries on the west side of Upper Klamath Lake and in the Sprague River; that’s about 360 river miles from the ocean.

The return of these salmon is just the latest extraordinary development following the largest river restoration project in U.S. history. The removal of four dams in Southern Oregon and Northern California was completed last year.

William Ray Jr., joins us now to talk about what this means and what comes next. He is a chairman of the Klamath Tribes. Chairman Ray, welcome to Think Out Loud.

William Ray Jr.: Mo sepk’eec’a waq’li’sii, everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this monumental, emotional time for the Klamath, Modoc, and Yahooskin band of Paiute People that make up the Klamath Tribes. Being the chairman’s an honor for my people, and an emotional time for cultural renewal and to rekindle our c’iyaals back home.

Miller: C’iyaals – that is a Klamath word for the Chinook in particular?

Ray Jr.: Salmon.

Miller: Salmon. There’s so much to talk about, but I’m going to start with this amazing journey itself, because even with these four dams that have been taken down, there are still two dams left and then there is the Upper Klamath Lake, which we can get to. But can you just describe the parts of the journey that these fish had to make to get to the Williamson and Sprague rivers?

Ray Jr.: Really, what specie that has been created by Creator or God that can go from freshwater to saltwater, back to freshwater, and make a trek that they haven’t made since 1909 when they were interrupted from our homelands, and be able to navigate their way through major gauntlets of two inadequate dams that provide not good fish ladders … They made it through there, made it through the toxic water of Lake Ewauna, all the way up through Upper Klamath Lake, onto the tributaries of the Wood River, the Sprague River, the Williamson River, and be able to end up 360 miles away. It’s an incredible Herculean feat that these fish have went through, after 115 years of not being here back in the territory of the Klamath, Modoc and Yahooskin Peoples. It’s just a blessing.

Miller: There were questions about whether they would be able to get through a fish ladder that was not built for them, right?

Ray Jr.: Indeed, that fish ladder at Keno Dam was built in the 1960s for trout. And to see ‘em go through there is just really quite amazing. There’s a certain amount of video on some of the first ones that came up. Because on October 8, the first ones made it through the dam into the Upper Klamath Lake. And then on October 10, the first one was detected in the Williamson River.

And from there, over 200, we have estimated, are here in the headwaters of the Klamath Watershed, which all originate on the aboriginal territory of the Klamath Tribes.

Miller: Do you remember, when you got the notices, whether it’s from your own fish biologists or from ODFW, that these fish had made it past these various checkpoints?

Ray Jr.: I do. I remember the hour, the day and where I was. I was in my office and my office overlooks, right out its back door here, on the Williamson River. And to think about our c’iyaals coming home, returning to have the renewal and us meeting together again is nothing but a spiritual awakening of my spirit. Because it helped with not only to feel really blessed and very happy, but also remorseful because there were a lot of elders that fought. Ever since 1909, my ancestors, my people, fought very hard to get to this point, to see them return to the Klamath Tribes and to have the renewal of an ancient fishing culture that has been interrupted with their being left out of our culture since 1909.

So it’s nothing but a spiritual, cultural, traditional and happy renewal, but also has a lot of remorse that’s filled with trauma. Because when you take these fish away, it hurts our culture and not only from a subsistence standpoint, but also from the medicinal values of these fish. Salmon made up about a third of our diet. The other third of the fishing diet came from our c’waam and koptu, our yeen, those sucker species of mullet that we relied on for thousands of years, and then our freshwater trout, along with the freshwater crawdaddies and and mussels that made up half of our diet in those resources.

So when we take that away, it hurts us. And we’ve lived through generational trauma without having all these fisheries because we didn’t have the salmon in 1909. In 1986, we as a tribe elected not to stop fishing our c’waam and koptu, which used to be in the millions when I was a young boy. And now, to see them being less than 5,000 really hurts the Klamath Tribe’s cultures.

Miller: To go back to the trip that these salmon did for the first time, and as you said, 114 years. I’m still mystified by this, their parents, grandparents or great great great grandparents didn’t spawn there. They didn’t come from there, they didn’t return to a place that they physically had been to. How did they know where to go?

Ray Jr.: That is a gift from Creator. And only Creator knows what he instilled in these species of fish, these salmon, these anadromous fish that can trip their way from saltwater, move up these tributaries with all these obstacles and end up 360 miles from the ocean, where they have not been for over 114 years. All we can say is that for the Klamath people, it’s a blessing to us to have them return home.

Miller: So if all goes well, now that these fish have made it through all these gauntlets and the toxicity of the Upper Klamath Lake, now they’re going to spawn and then the fry will live in the river before eventually returning this cycle, going back down the river to the ocean and coming back. But what does salmon habitat look like right now in the Upper Klamath Watershed in the Williamson River outside your window, in the Sprague River, these other tributaries?

Ray Jr.: It’s not as good as we would hope to accommodate their arrival again, to return home. There’s much work to do in the watershed. The Klamath’s Tribes’ overriding goal of watershed restoration is to produce cold, clean, drinkable water. We believe that it crosses every border, every boundary, every human, because we all have to have drinkable water, fresh water. And we believe that this watershed restoration has to be put into overdrive to help every bit that we can to restore some of the natural habitats that have been reclaimed for various reasons or taken out of production. We have to put them back in the system again, and try to help the overall water quality and the nutrient loading as quickly as possible.

As I mentioned, it’s a great blessing for us, as a Tribal First Nation, to have our c’iyaals, our salmon, come home and be with us again. But our c’waam and koptu are in serious danger of possibly going extinct in the next three to four years. And what can we do to help them? Watershed restoration, doing everything possible to clean up the water quality and try to figure out ways … As the salmon are when they come out as being fry, we cannot move our young juveniles that are c’waam and koptu to into into adulthood, because these habitat losses of wetlands with the wetland plants that we always gathered as a people – the tules, the cattails, the locust – these important plants, along with the willows, all contributed to the overall health of that 3-foot area in the lake, in the rivers to provide that critical habitat for these fish to grow into adult stages to make their own lives.

So we have a lot of work. And one of the most critical works that we’re working with our partners in the irrigation community is trying to figure out the best way forward to install these fish ladders on these irrigation diversions, as we have salmon and our c’waam and koptu in these irrigation diversions. And we’re trying to figure out ways to partner and work together to try to get that resolved as quickly as possible. Because that’s been in the decades of not getting anything done.

We feel like the trust responsibility from the federal government and our Treaty of 1864 is a critical part of that. And here, again, it’s no different than some of the food insecurity that we’re going to. We entered into a contract with the United States under our 1864 treaty. That treaty meant that all these things would be taken care of and we wouldn’t have to be fighting for them like we are right now. And we’ve had to fight for these trust responsibility resources to take care of what is honored in the Treaty of 1864.

As an example, we have $3.17 million that was promised for urgent stream restoration efforts, but that has been put on hold because of all the federal budgets, along with all the the new administration’s emphasis on cutting back on the federal budget. But that doesn’t help us, because these restoration projects were promised as a part of a larger package of the dam removal that we would do these kind of things, in order to have good cold, clean, drinkable water and for our fish to have adequate oxygen to pass through all these tributaries to live.

Miller: Just to be clear, are you saying that some of the money that was promised through this broad river restoration, dam removal and habitat restoration deal has been withheld by the Trump administration?

Ray Jr.: Yes, the $3.17 million goes for urgent upper watershed stream restoration, and it pays for our seven-person tribal restoration crew. And here, again, these things have a domino effect when they’re not honored. This money was already targeted anyways for this work, so the delays that we have in the federal funding affects the overall restoration work. Because here, again, Mother Earth’s timeline isn’t on our timeline as humans. It takes a while to have it renewed and take hold with the watershed restoration of the plants and all the things that make up that fringe habitat for wetlands.

The other piece that I can share is that …

Miller: If you don’t mind, you have a minute-and-a-half left total.

Ray Jr.: OK, so when I talk about this for a minute, the next largest wetland watershed restoration work also came online last year in 2024 with the dam removal, which was called the Agency-Barnes Phase 1, a 14,000-acre wetland project that came online December 20 of 2024. And it’s now being able to restore itself to produce the wetlands that we need that’s critical for all these species.

Miller: William Ray Jr., thank you very much.

Ray Jr.: And thank you to all the viewers.

Miller: That’s William Ray Jr. He is the chairman of the Klamath Tribe. He joined us to talk about the return of Chinook salmon to the Upper Klamath watershed and the broader Klamath watershed renewal and restoration that still needs to happen.

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