{"id":253806,"date":"2025-07-10T15:26:14","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T15:26:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/253806\/"},"modified":"2025-07-10T15:26:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T15:26:14","slug":"young-indigenous-kayakers-about-to-complete-historic-river-journey-on-klamath-river-after-largest-dam-removal-in-us-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/253806\/","title":{"rendered":"Young indigenous kayakers about to complete historic river journey on Klamath River, after \u2018largest dam removal in US history\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Editor\u2019s Note: Call to Earth is a CNN editorial series committed to reporting on the environmental challenges facing our planet, together with the solutions. Rolex\u2019s Perpetual Planet Initiative<\/a> has partnered with CNN to drive awareness and education around key sustainability issues and to inspire positive action.\n<\/p>\n

CNN
\n \u00a0\u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n Ruby Williams\u2019 birthday was not your average 18th. She celebrated it on the Klamath River, with a group of young people making a historic journey paddling from the river\u2019s headwaters in southern Oregon to its mouth in the Pacific Ocean, just south of Crescent City, California. It marked the first time in a century that the descent has been possible, after the recent removal of four dams allowed the river to flow freely.\n <\/p>\n

\n Williams, together with fellow paddler Keeya Wiki, 17, spoke to CNN on day 15 of their month-long journey, which they are due to complete on Friday. At this point, they had just 141 miles (227 kilometers) of the 310-mile (499 kilometer) journey left to go and had already passed through some of the most challenging rapids, such as those at the \u201cBig Bend\u201d and \u201cHell\u2019s Corner\u201d sections of the river.\n <\/p>\n

\n Both were exhausted and hadn\u2019t showered in days \u2014 although they promised they \u201caren\u2019t completely feral.\u201d However, despite tired minds, they were steadfast in their commitment.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe are reclaiming our river, reclaiming our sport,\u201d said Williams.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe are getting justice,\u201d Wiki, who is from the Yurok Tribe, added. \u201cAnd making sure that my people and all the people on the Klamath River can live how we\u2019re supposed to.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n The Klamath River runs deep in the cultures of the native peoples living in its basin, who historically used dugout canoes to travel along it. They view it as a living person, a relative, who they can depend on \u2014 and in turn protect.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt\u2019s our greatest teacher, our family member,\u201d said Williams, who is from the Karuk Tribe, which occupies lands along the middle course of the Klamath. \u201cWe revolve ceremonies around it, like when the salmon start running (the annual migration from the sea back to freshwater rivers to spawn), we know it\u2019s time to start a family.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Historically, it was also a lifeline, providing them with an abundance of fish. The Klamath was once the third-largest salmon-producing river<\/a> on the West Coast of the US. But between 1918 and 1966, electric utility company California Oregon Power Company (which later became PacifiCorp), built a series of hydroelectric dams along the river\u2019s course, which cut off the upstream pathway for migrating salmon, and the tribes lost this cultural and commercial resource.\n <\/p>\n

\"Keeya<\/p>\n

\"Ruby<\/p>\n

\n For decades, native people \u2014 such as the Karuk and Yurok tribes \u2014 demanded the removal of the dams and restoration of the river. But it was only in 2002, after low water levels caused a disease outbreak<\/a> that killed more than 30,000 fish<\/a>, that momentum really started to build for their cause.\n <\/p>\n

\n Twenty years later, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission finally approved a plan<\/a> to remove four dams on the lower Klamath River. This was when Paddle Tribal Waters<\/a> was set up by the global organization R\u00edos to Rivers to reconnect native children to the ancient river. Believing that native peoples ought to be the first to descend the newly restored river, the program started by teaching local kids from the basin how to paddle in whitewater. Wiki and Williams were among them \u2014 neither had kayaked before then.\n <\/p>\n

\n In the fall of 2024, the last of the four dams was removed \u2013 completing what has been called \u201cthe world\u2019s largest dam removal effort\u201d by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration<\/a> (NOAA). Upriver (beyond where the Klamath River technically begins), two smaller non-hydroelectric dams remain, where the paddlers had to disembark and carry the kayaks overland; there are currently no plans to remove them despite an ongoing campaign.\n <\/p>\n

\n Wiki recalled feeling giddy when she heard that the last dam had fallen. \u201cSo many of our elders and our aunties and uncles\u2026 fought so hard to get these dams down,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was a really long, hard fight, and a lot of people thought \u2014 even my grandma thought \u2014 they would never see the dams come down in their lifetime.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cSo, for us to paddle down the river\u2026 it\u2019s very surreal. I think we\u2019re all just so grateful, knowing that the salmon can finally go from the mouth to the headwaters, and that we can go from the headwaters to the mouth too.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Weston Boyles, founder and director of R\u00edos to Rivers, who is also on the journey, said that it was critical that native people lead the first descent.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cHistorically, \u2018first descents\u2019 have been a colonial idea: outsiders staking claims on waterways that indigenous communities have navigated for millennia,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re reclaiming a stolen narrative. It matters because those waters flow through ancestral homelands, and these young paddlers are reasserting sovereignty, healing cultural trauma, and honoring their tribes\u2019 deep connections to the river.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n The ecological impact is also something to celebrate. Within a few days of the final dam being removed, chinook salmon (the largest of the Pacific salmon species) were seen swimming past the former location of Iron Gate Dam in northern California \u2014 a spot where no fish had passed in 60 years, said Dave Coffman, director of northern California and southern Oregon for Resource Environmental Solutions (RES), the company working on the Klamath\u2019s restoration.\n <\/p>\n

\"Since<\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe were hopeful that within a couple of years we would see salmon return to Southern Oregon. It took the salmon two weeks,\u201d he told CNN. \u201cNo one saw that coming \u2014 the response has exceeded our wildest hopes. It demonstrates the remarkable resilience of these fish: if we give them a chance, they will make their way back home.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n But there is no denying the landscape has changed dramatically since before the dams and it will take years to recover, according to Coffman. RES is working to accelerate the natural process by reshaping channels, excavating sediment, planting billions of native seeds along the riverbanks, and even using helicopters to place downed trees in tributaries to provide crucial cover for fish and wildlife.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cSometimes we give nature a gentle nudge, but sometimes we give it a great big shove in the right direction,\u201d says Coffman.\n <\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\n Wiki and Williams have already witnessed the results. \u201cIt\u2019s been so cool to paddle through where the old reservoirs were and see all the new growth,\u201d said Williams. \u201cI got to see it earlier this year and it was kind of looking sad, and then I paddled through a couple days ago and it looks like a completely different river.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n After completing the epic journey, the girls will go their separate ways. Williams will head off to college in fall and Wiki is starting her final year of high school. But despite living on different sections of the river and being from different tribes, they are confident their paths will cross again. Both strongly believe their futures are grounded in the Klamath.\n <\/p>\n

\n Williams dreams of coming back in her college breaks and becoming a paddle instructor, while Wiki sees herself doing advocacy work for her community.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe are celebrating (now), but there\u2019s still so much work to be done in the United States and also globally around dams and dam removal,\u201d said Wiki. \u201c(I want to) create a larger global community.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Editor\u2019s Note: Call to Earth is a CNN editorial series committed to reporting on the environmental challenges facing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253807,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3843],"tags":[728,70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-253806","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114829642026392237","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}