About the Project

The Klamath River Basin is the ancestral home of five Native California Tribes: the Yurok, Karuk, Hoopa, Shasta, and Klamath Tribes. The Klamath River, which flows through Southern Oregon and Northern California, once teemed with salmon, providing the main staple of the Klamath Basin Tribes’ diet. The river also was central to the Tribes’ culture and means of transportation.

Along the mainstem of the Klamath, four aging hydroelectric dams—Copco #1, Copco #2, Iron Gate, and JC Boyle—block salmon and steelhead from reaching more than 400 miles of spawning and rearing habitat in the upper basin. Historically, the Upper Klamath-Trinity Rivers spring-run Chinook salmon was the most abundant run on the river. Today less than 3 percent remain, in large part because they cannot access historical habitat in the Upper Klamath Basin.

Klamath River Renewal Corporation (KRRC) is the nonprofit corporation formed in 2016 to take ownership of the four dams from PacifiCorp and oversee the dam removal process. That work will include restoring formerly inundated lands and implementing required mitigation measures in compliance with federal, state, and local regulations. In June 2019, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved the transfer of the four dams from PacifiCorp to KRRC.

Establishing the agreement to remove the Klamath dams took years of litigation and negotiations and required buy-in from over 40 stakeholders, including PacifiCorp, Tribal governments—specifically the Yurok, Karuk and Klamath Tribes—conservation organizations, and state, and federal agencies. The removal of the Klamath Dams is planned for 2023.

Partner project pages:

• CalTrout: caltrout.org/campaigns/klamath-dams
• Klamath River Renewal Corporation page: klamathrenewal.org
• Reconnect the Klamath: reconnectklamath.org
• Bring Home the Salmon: bringthesalmonhome.org