In Washington, over 70 percent of people believe protecting wild salmon is important. Up until now, the money we have spent has not worked to save Snake River salmon. We have paid to transport salmon for hundreds of miles in trucks or barges just to get them past dams. We have released water from upstream dams, foregoing some power production, to increase flows as salmon migrate through the dam-impounded reservoirs. It is time to stop treating the symptoms and address the root cause of their decline.
Dams kill salmon.
Fish die going through turbines, or become traumatized, disoriented and easy prey as they come out of dam by-pass systems, trucks and barges. Spilled over dams, young salmon smolts survive better, but when spills are managed poorly, the smolts may become afflicted with gas bubble disease, a salmon version of the bends. Perhaps even more significantly, dams destroy rivers, and salmon need rivers. What used to be the Lower Snake River is now a series of slow-moving reservoirs. Young migrating salmon take weeks or months longer than before dam construction to find their way to the ocean.