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OREGON, USA — President Donald Trump on Thursday pulled the U.S.
out of an agreement with Washington, Oregon and four American
Indian tribes to work together to restore salmon populations and
boost tribal clean energy development in the Pacific Northwest,
deriding the plan as “radical environmentalism” that could have
resulted in the breaching of four controversial dams on the Snake
River.

The deal, known as the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement, was
reached in late 2023 and heralded by the Biden administration,
tribes and conservationists as historic. It allowed for a pause in
decades of litigation over the harm the federal government's
operation of dams in the Northwest has done to the fish.

Under it, the federal government said it planned to spend more than
$1 billion over a decade to help recover depleted salmon runs. The
government also said that it would build enough new clean energy
projects in the Pacific Northwest to replace the hydropower
generated by the Lower Snake River dams — the Ice Harbor, Little
Goose, Lower Monumental and Lower Granite — should Congress ever
agree to remove them.

In a statement, the White House said former President Joe Biden's
decision to sign the agreement "placed concerns about climate
change above the Nation’s interests in reliable energy sources.”

Conservations groups, Democratic members of Congress and the
Northwest tribes criticized Trump's action.

RELATED: U.S. Army Corps sees 50% funding drop for Columbia River
salmon restoration work

“Donald Trump doesn’t know the first thing about the Northwest and
our way of life — so of course, he is abruptly and unilaterally
upending a historic agreement that finally put us on a path to
salmon recovery, while preserving stable dam operations for growers
and producers, public utilities, river users, ports and others
throughout the Northwest," Democratic U.S. Sen. Patty Murray of
Washington said in a written statement. “This decision is
grievously wrong and couldn’t be more shortsighted.”

Basin was once world's greatest salmon-producing river system
The Columbia River Basin, an area roughly the size of Texas, was
once the world’s greatest salmon-producing river system, with at
least 16 stocks of salmon and steelhead. Today, four are extinct
and seven are listed under the Endangered Species Act. Another
iconic but endangered Northwest species, a population of killer
whales, also depend on the salmon.

RELATED: Despite an uptick in salmon returns expected, researcher
doubtful it's a sign of overall recovery

The construction of the first dams on the main Columbia River,
including the Grand Coulee and Bonneville dams in the 1930s,
provided jobs during the Great Depression, as well as hydropower
and navigation. The dams made the town of Lewiston, Idaho, the most
inland seaport on the West Coast, and many farmers in the region
rely on barges to ship their crops.

But the dams are also main culprit behind the salmon’s decline, and
fisheries scientists have concluded that breaching the dams in
eastern Washington on the Snake River, the largest tributary of the
Columbia, would be the best hope for recovering them, providing the
fish with access to hundreds of miles of pristine habitat and
spawning grounds in Idaho.

The tribes, which reserved the right to fish in their usual and
accustomed grounds when they ceded vast amounts of land in their
19th century treaties with the U.S., warned as far back as the late
1930s that the salmon runs could disappear, with the fish no longer
able to access spawning grounds upstream.

“This agreement was designed to foster collaborative and informed
resource management and energy development in the Pacific
Northwest, including significant tribal energy initiatives,” Yakama
Tribal Council Chairman Gerald Lewis said in a written statement.
“The Administration’s decision to terminate these commitments
echoes the federal government’s historic pattern of broken promises
to tribes and is contrary to President Trump’s stated commitment to
domestic energy development.”

Republicans in region opposed agreement
Northwestern Republicans in Congress had largely opposed the
agreement, warning that it would hurt the region's economy, though
in 2021 Republican Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho proposed removing the
earthen berms on either side of the four Lower Snake River dams to
let the river flow freely, and to spend $33 billion to replace the
benefits of the dams.

“Today’s action by President Trump reverses the efforts by the
Biden administration and extreme environmental activists to remove
the dams, which would have threatened the reliability of our power
grid, raised energy prices, and decimated our ability to export
grain to foreign markets," Rep. Dan Newhouse, a Republican from
Washington, said in a news release.

Tribes, environmentalists vow to fight for salmon
The tribes and the environmental law firm Earthjustice, which
represents conservation, clean energy and fishing groups in
litigation against the federal government, said they would continue
working to rebuild salmon stocks.

“Unfortunately, this short-sighted decision to renege on this
important agreement is just the latest in a series of anti-
government and anti-science actions coming from the Trump
administration,” Earthjustice Senior Attorney Amanda Goodin said.
"This administration may be giving up on our salmon, but we will
keep fighting to prevent extinction and realize win-win solutions
for the region.”

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