Trump administration pulls US out of agreement to help restore salmon in the Columbia River
The deal, known as the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement, was reached in late 2023 and heralded by the Biden administration, tribes and conservationists as historic. It allowed for a pause in decades of litigation over the harm the federal government's operation of dams in the Northwest has done to the fish.
Under it, the federal government said it planned to spend more than $1 billion over a decade to help recover depleted salmon runs. The government also said that it would build enough new clean energy projects in the Pacific Northwest to replace the hydropower generated by the Lower Snake River dams — the Ice Harbor, Little Goose, Lower Monumental and Lower Granite — should Congress ever agree to remove them.
In a statement, the White House said former President Joe Biden's decision to sign the agreement 'placed concerns about climate change above the Nation's interests in reliable energy sources.'
Conservations groups, Democratic members of Congress and the Northwest tribes criticized Trump's action.
'Donald Trump doesn't know the first thing about the Northwest and our way of life — so of course, he is abruptly and unilaterally upending a historic agreement that finally put us on a path to salmon recovery, while preserving stable dam operations for growers and producers, public utilities, river users, ports and others throughout the Northwest,' Democratic U.S. Sen. Patty Murray of Washington said in a written statement. 'This decision is grievously wrong and couldn't be more shortsighted.'
Basin was once world's greatest salmon-producing river system
The Columbia River Basin, an area roughly the size of Texas, was once the world's greatest salmon-producing river system, with at least 16 stocks of salmon and steelhead. Today, four are extinct and seven are listed under the Endangered Species Act. Another iconic but endangered Northwest species, a population of killer whales, also depend on the salmon.
The construction of the first dams on the main Columbia River, including the Grand Coulee and Bonneville dams in the 1930s, provided jobs during the Great Depression, as well as hydropower and navigation. The dams made the town of Lewiston, Idaho, the most inland seaport on the West Coast, and many farmers in the region rely on barges to ship their crops.
But the dams are also main culprit behind the salmon's decline, and fisheries scientists have concluded that breaching the dams in eastern Washington on the Snake River, the largest tributary of the Columbia, would be the best hope for recovering them, providing the fish with access to hundreds of miles of pristine habitat and spawning grounds in Idaho.
The tribes, which reserved the right to fish in their usual and accustomed grounds when they ceded vast amounts of land in their 19th century treaties with the U.S., warned as far back as the late 1930s that the salmon runs could disappear, with the fish no longer able to access spawning grounds upstream.
'This agreement was designed to foster collaborative and informed resource management and energy development in the Pacific Northwest, including significant tribal energy initiatives,' Yakama Tribal Council Chairman Gerald Lewis said in a written statement. 'The Administration's decision to terminate these commitments echoes the federal government's historic pattern of broken promises to tribes, and is contrary to President Trump's stated commitment to domestic energy development.'
Republicans in region opposed agreement
Northwestern Republicans in Congress had largely opposed the agreement, warning that it would hurt the region's economy, though in 2021 Republican Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho proposed removing the earthen berms on either side of the four Lower Snake River dams to let the river flow freely, and to spend $33 billion to replace the benefits of the dams.
'Today's action by President Trump reverses the efforts by the Biden administration and extreme environmental activists to remove the dams, which would have threatened the reliability of our power grid, raised energy prices, and decimated our ability to export grain to foreign markets,' Rep. Dan Newhouse, a Republican from Washington, said in a news release.
Tribes, environmentalists vow to fight for salmon
The tribes and the environmental law firm Earthjustice, which represents conservation, clean energy and fishing groups in litigation against the federal government, said they would continue working to rebuild salmon stocks.
'Unfortunately, this short-sighted decision to renege on this important agreement is just the latest in a series of anti-government and anti-science actions coming from the Trump administration,' Earthjustice Senior Attorney Amanda Goodin said. 'This administration may be giving up on our salmon, but we will keep fighting to prevent extinction and realize win-win solutions for the region.'
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