by Sarah Phelan
In case you missed it, March 14 was International Day of Action for Rivers, those beautiful silvery slivers of water that feed salmon fingerlings into the world wide mobius of oceans, then draw the adult salmon back to the headwaters where they were spawned, like pods beamed back up to the mother ship.
Only in the case of salmon, who jump six feet on average, returning is impossible if there’s a big fat dam in their way.
Such is the case on the Klamath River in Oregon. Once the third most productive salmon fishery in America, the river is encumbered by four power dams, which were built 80 years ago, average 84 ft in height and stand between the threatened salmon and over 350 miles of historic spawning grounds.