Klamath Basin

Over a hundred family and community members gathered on the sand spit shore below Requa Village on the Yurok Reservation, where the Klamath River meets the Pacific Ocean, to welcome 120 Indigenous youth kayakers who made history as the first people to descend over 310 miles down the free-flowing Klamath River.

Water managers in the Klamath Basin say, for the first time since 2019, there will be enough water to meet everyone’s demands this year.

After decades of conflict, farmers and tribes say they’re working in concert to restore salmon habitat in the Klamath Basin. But two dams remain - one that blocks fish passage another that plays a key role for agriculture.

For thousands of years, the Klamath Tribes have harvested a highly nutritious first food called wocus from the wetlands of Southern Oregon. As wetlands were drained for agriculture, the tribes lost a huge portion of the habitat supporting the wocus plant. Now, there’s hope that farmers can help bring that habitat back.

OPB video captures four Klamath River dam sites and Copco Lake reservoir before and after a $500 million removal operation.

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife spotted the fish on a tributary above the former J.C. Boyle Dam site, just north of the California border. Several more soon followed it.

A nonprofit group fights an uphill battle to save the victims of a massive outbreak of avian botulism that continues to ravage waterfowl at one of the Klamath National Wildlife Refuges.

The outbreak of avian botulism at the Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge has killed tens of thousands of migratory birds this summer. Conservation groups are waiting for cold weather to stop it.

Increased water allocation to the Klamath Basin wildlife refuges is helping mitigate a summer botulism outbreak that has resulted in the deaths of thousands of migratory birds.

A combination of botulism and bird flu has led to estimates of thousands of birds dying in the Klamath National Wildlife Refuge Complex this summer.