The Dam That Came Down and Brought the Salmon Back
On Washington's Elwha River, two dams blocked salmon for nearly a century until federal deconstruction began in twenty eleven. This is the story of how the river remade itself, carrying millions of tons of sediment, reawakening dormant fish genetics, and revealing the decades required to heal a watershed.
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Dams built without fish ladders collapsed the Elwha River salmon population from four hundred thousand to three thousand.
Engineers relied on natural river flow to flush twenty-one million cubic meters of accumulated sediment downstream.
Sediment flushed from behind dams built over twenty-six hectares of brand-new coastal beach habitat.
Chinook salmon began recolonizing pristine upstream river habitats the very same year dam removal started.
Landlocked rainbow trout resumed ocean migrations after being cut off for over a century.
A twelve-year fishing ban ended in October twenty twenty-three with a tribal ceremonial coho harvest.
- 01Intro1 min
- 02A River Severed2 min
- 03Unleashing the Sediment Mountain3 min
- 04Instinct Awakened3 min
- 05The Decadal Horizon of Recovery4 min
- 06Outro1 min
- SAB Mtg Pres July12 Pess 07 17 12 Final.pdf
- duke.edu
- Dam Removals on the Elwha River
- The Elwha River Restoration: A Case Study in Adaptive Management for Salmon Recovery
- Large-scale dam removal on the Elwha River, Washington, USA: Coastal geomorphic change
- Bf6b3510 f4f1 11e8 8cc7 3104a696b6cb Pess 2018 EcosystemresponsetotheremovaloftheElwhaRiverDams PRESENTATION.pdf
- Frontiers | Vegetation responses to large dam removal on the Elwha River, Washington, USA
- Elwha River Restoration - an overview | Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe
- Biological Impacts of the Elwha River Dams and Potential Salmonid Responses to Dam Removal.pdf
- The Elwha’s Living Laboratory: Lessons From the World’s Largest Dam-Removal Project • The Revelator
- Lessons of the Elwha River: Managing Health Hazards During Dam Removal - PMC
- 20171004 Casestudy US Elwha.pdf
- Five years later the elwha reborn
- Celebrating 10 years of dam removal, salmon recovery, and community resilience on the Lower Elwha
- seattleu.edu
- The inspiring tale of elwhas dam removal and biodiversity resurgence
- GOVPUB I49 PURL gpo172672.pdf
- clallamcountymrc.org
- Elwha River Restoration - Olympic National Park (U.S. National Park Service)
- A Landmark Case of River Restoration: The Elwha Dam Removal Project
- Adaptive sediment management program final report for the elwha river restoration project
- youtube.com
- The Beautiful Undammed: A River Revived by Salmon | Wild Hope | Grades 6-8, 9-12 Science Teaching and Lesson Resources
- youtube.com
- Frontiers | Challenges of implementing a multi-agency monitoring and adaptive management strategy for federally threatened Chinook salmon and steelhead trout during and after dam removal in the Elwha
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