Lynda Mapes and her colleagues at the Seattle Times built a beautiful multimedia piece on the return of nature to the Elwha River on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula now that the dams are gone.
It has an amazing picture from 2010, pre-dam removal, of Chinook salmon at the bottom of the dam with this caption:
In this 2010 photo adult Chinook salmon are blocked in their journey upriver by Elwha Dam, built five miles from the river mouth with no fish passage. Even after 100 years they persisted, circling at the face of the dam every spawning season, trying to get upstream.
Oh my. 100 years.
every win for environmental restorations is important in the face of so many other environmental destructions. it gives a person more hope for the longer term. like perhaps, we can look ahead and be a little less greedy and selfish. think of other creatures besides ourselves… 🙂
What amazing inter-generational memory