FILE – In this May 15, 2019, file picture, the Lower Granite Dam on the Snake River is seen from the air near Colfax, Wash. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)
By Alexandria Jensen | The Public Forum
FILE – In this May 15, 2019, file picture, the Lower Granite Dam on the Snake River is seen from the air near Colfax, Wash. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)
By Alexandria Jensen | The Public Forum
2023 will mark what researchers anticipate to be the most affordable ever taped return of Snake River steelhead salmon after their migration to the Pacific Ocean. Their extraordinary migratory pattern covering 900 miles made difficult by the 4 Snake River dams hindering their course back to freshwater to generate.
The system of dams and tanks eliminates 50 to 80 percent of juvenile salmon and steelhead as the fish make their method downstream to the ocean. The impending termination of these gorgeous fish subsequently spells financial and ecological catastrophe for Washington, Oregon, and our next-door neighbors in Idaho.
Addy, a 21-year-old river guide in Idaho, explained that older guides inform her stories as if they are misconceptions. A river so filled with steelhead — millions — that each pull of an oar would brush their gleaming bodies as they swam upstream en masse. The fish frequently jumped into the rafts. She frets that in her life time, she will never ever witness the exceptional migration or thriving river system as the steelhead population gradually decreases. She hopes that with assistance, a policy to deconstruct the 4 dams will pass.
The return of steelhead suggests life for the neighborhoods who depend upon their go back to freshwater. They are an environmental, financial and cultural need for sustaining life along the numerous miles which they can no longer pass through due to the dams in location. These dams no longer produce a substantial quantity of power to validate their existence along the Snake River.
Removal of the dams and usage of wind, solar, geothermal and biomass energy is the only alternative for avoiding the ecological and financial catastrophes which will take place if steelhead salmon vanish from this earth due to the fact that of our carelessness (#SteelheadMeanBusiness).
Alexandria Jensen, Millcreek
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