A Year of Healing: The Klamath River After Dam Removal

When the first section of dam on the Klamath River came down last year, we wrote about it here on Casts That Care. It felt less like construction work and more like ceremony. Generations of sediment, policy, and pain began to move again. And now, a year later, the

Picture of the beginning of dam deconstruction

Klamath is teaching us what freedom looks like when a river finally breathes.

The story unfolding along those 400 miles of river is as complex as the watershed itself. Once choked by four dams, the Klamath is now reshaping its channels, flushing old silt, and reawakening the cold-water arteries that once carried salmon deep into Oregon and Northern California. In the first weeks after the final dam breach, observers counted thousands of Chinook pushing upstream, some reaching gravel beds that had not seen a salmon in more than a century. Mayflies and caddis returned too, almost as if they had been waiting.

Before and After Dam Deconstruction

It is not perfect. The sediment released from decades of still water is painting the lower river brown, and each rainfall pulls more soil from the newly exposed reservoir beds. There are stretches that still look raw and wounded. But the recovery is not just ecological, it is cultural. For the Yurok, Karuk, and Klamath Tribes, the river’s renewal is a homecoming, a living restoration of ceremony, song, and sustenance. “This isn’t the end of a fight,” one Yurok biologist told OPB. “It’s the beginning of something we get to take care of again.”

What the Klamath Teaches Us

The Klamath’s transformation has already become a blueprint for the future. Scientists from NOAA and the U.S. Geological Survey have called it the largest controlled river restoration in modern history, with 15 million cubic yards of sediment released and more than 400 miles of habitat reopened. Early data show improving oxygen levels, temperature stability, and renewed nutrient transport, the signs of a river coming back to life.

For anglers, it means more than fish counts. It means the return of movement, of possibility. To stand on the banks now is to see what happens when a river is trusted to heal itself.

Across the country, similar stories are emerging:

• On Maine’s Penobscot River, dams removed a decade ago led to a 1,000 percent increase in river herring runs and a rebound in striped bass.

• On Washington’s White Salmon, salmon and steelhead returned within months of the Condit Dam’s removal.

• Even small systems in New York and the Midwest are showing that within three years of dam removal, oxygen levels, sediment balance, and insect diversity can return to near-natural states.

The pattern is clear: when we remove the barriers, nature moves fast to reclaim what is hers. The setbacks, sediment, erosion, and temporary fish kills, are short-lived compared to the decades of stagnation that precede them.

The Bigger Picture

The Klamath has become a living classroom for every river still dammed, diverted, or forgotten. It is showing that restoration is not just a project, it is a process of patience and partnership. Scientists are learning that resilience comes not from control, but from letting go.

And it is not just the fish that benefit. With water temperatures cooling, vegetation returning, and sediment flowing naturally, the entire food web begins to knit itself back together, from macroinvertebrates to osprey. The Klamath is becoming what it was always meant to be: a river of return.

For those of us who spend our lives reading water, for fly fishers, guides, and conservationists, this story matters. It is proof that rivers remember how to heal. It reminds us that the sound of a riffle is older than politics, and that sometimes the best way to fix a river is to give it back to itself.

Where We Go From Here

The Klamath experiment has opened the door for a new era in water management. The federal government and tribal nations are already studying how the lessons learned here can apply to future dam removals in the Pacific Northwest, the Rockies, and even in parts of the Southeast. These projects take years of planning, cooperation, and funding, but they hold the potential to restore more than just fish runs. They can reconnect entire ecosystems, revive local economies through guiding and recreation, and rebuild relationships between people and place.

What It Means for Anglers

For anglers, the Klamath is a reminder that conservation and opportunity can coexist. The next generation of fly fishers will cast in places where their grandparents could not. They will see salmon in waters that were once still and sterile. And they will carry the responsibility to protect what was hard-won. The Klamath’s healing is not finished, but its progress is already changing what we believe is possible.

Read our original coverage of the dam removal HERE, and see how far the Klamath has come.