Within minutes of reaching the banks of the Klamath River, we saw them — four or five large Chinook salmon, their chrome-colored bodies catching sunlight as they splashed in a stretch of river that had been closed off to them for over a century.

An old friend and I had traveled to this remote spot on Oregon’s southern border, 200 miles from the ocean, to welcome the salmon home. It was an emotional encounter.

I’ve been fighting to protect and recover salmon for decades, and it’s been a hard journey.

In my nearly 30 years with the Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition, many runs in the Columbia Basin — once the largest producer of salmon in the world – have declined precipitously due largely to dams and reservoirs that block their passage and degrade their habitat. Four costly federal dams along the lower Snake River, the Columbia’s largest tributary, have proven particularly lethal to our native fish.

But the story of the Klamath River — like that of the Elwha on the Olympic Peninsula – is this: Salmon are strong and resilient, and when you remove dams and restore rivers, they come home.

If ever there were a story of hope, the Klamath is it.

In 2023 and 2024, crews demolished four aging hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River on both sides of the Oregon-California border. It stands as the largest dam removal/river restoration project in history and a monumental achievement, the culmination of two-plus decades of tireless advocacy, analysis and activism — led by the Yurok, Karuk and Klamath tribes and supported by conservation groups, commercial fishermen, anglers and the public.

When the last dam was breached in October 2024, 420 miles of habitat in the Klamath River watershed in Oregon and California reopened to salmon for the first time in a century.

Days later, salmon began to return — at a pace few expected.

That first year, some 6,000 salmon made it past the lowest demolition site. This fall, they reached a new milestone: Oregon scientists observed Chinook salmon in the tributaries on the west side of Upper Klamath Lake, considered the headwaters of this 250-mile watershed. This year, adult return levels are expected to triple those of 2024.

Biologists have noted other signs of renewal in this recovering ecosystem.

They’ve recorded more bald eagles, black bears and river otters, animals sustained by salmon. High water temperatures in the mainstem Klamath River have fallen, returning to the cooler, more natural fluctuations salmon need to thrive. Widespread toxic algae blooms that used to infect the stagnant reservoir waters have disappeared.

Scientists have also recorded a far lower prevalence of a parasite that plagued juvenile salmon prior to dam removal.

As one scientist told reporters: “The river seemed to come alive almost instantly after dam removal.”

When my friend and I traveled to southern Oregon and northern California two months ago, we were also struck by the signs of recovery.

At every stop along the river, we saw Chinook thrashing in the water — working their way upstream, fighting for territory, courting and digging redds. We saw salmon not only in the mainstem but also tributaries, like Jenny Creek and the Scott River.

We saw fresh bear and otter tracks, heron fishing in the river and the first signs of revegetation along newly exposed banks.

We also talked to people, including an employee of the company hired to demolish the dams — a man who proudly recognized his role and the historic nature of this project.

We ran into a retired power manager struggling to come to terms with the river’s changes. We saw a tribal father and his teenage son fishing quietly together.

Witnessing signs of recovery, talking to people, watching salmon thrash in the water — all of it was deeply moving.

But I was most struck by what this has meant to the tribes, whose opinions were not sought — were in fact roundly discounted — when the dams were built over a century ago, swamping their historic fishing grounds and pushing a way of life into the shadows.

In the months since the dams have come down, many tribal leaders have spoken at news conferences and scientific gatherings — joyous to see the salmon returning but also sorrowful for those who missed this moment, those whose lives were defined not by the river’s recovery, but by its loss.

Amy Bowers Cordalis, a Yurok Tribe member and lawyer who played a key role in the Klamath dam removal effort, just published a book, “The Water Remembers: My Indigenous Family’s Fight to Save a River and a Way of Life.”

In a story in the Los Angeles Times, she touched upon the power of dam removal — “a nature-based solution to heal an ecosystem” – and what it means to see the return of what she called “my great-grandmother’s river.”

“I feel like I am just now beginning to see little glimpses of what I imagine she saw,” she told the LA Times. “A beautiful, healthy, vibrant river.”

Today, in my role at Save Our Wild Salmon, I’m working as part of a larger alliance that includes four tribes — the Nez Perce, the Yakama Nation, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation – as well as the states of Washington and Oregon.

We’re working together to rebuild abundant native fish populations in the Columbia Basin, including the removal of the four deadly federal dams on the lower Snake River that have raised water temperatures to lethal levels, degraded habitat and harmed communities and a special way of life here in the Pacific Northwest.

As a resident of Vashon Island, I see this work as also deeply relevant to the ecosystem here.

Our beloved Southern Resident orca whales, among our nation’s most endangered species, are in decline in large part because their major prey source — Chinook salmon — is in decline. With its historic productivity and remaining pockets of large, well-protected habitat, the Columbia and Snake River Basin represents our nation’s best opportunity to restore the large numbers of Chinook our hungry orcas need to survive and recover.

My pilgrimage to the Klamath River brought home to me the astonishing power of a river to heal itself.

It is my greatest hope that I will one day stand with tribal members and many others on the banks of the Snake, celebrating — just as I did on the Klamath — the restoration of a mighty river and the return of salmon to their ancestral home.

Joseph Bogaard lives on Vashon Island. He is the executive director of the Save Our wild Salmon Coalition — working to protect and restore wild salmon and their rivers and the many gifts that both bring to people and ecosystems here in the Northwest.