Hydropower

Improvements Needed

Dams on the Lewis and Cowlitz Rivers block fish access to historically productive habitat and prevent natural processes, such as gravel and wood movement and habitat-forming floods. Reintroducing salmon and steelhead trout to these watersheds is crucial for recovery. Four of the seven spring Chinook salmon populations depend on habitat above these dams. Although federal licenses require improvements in fish passage, no programs have achieved their goals.

The Lower Columbia Fish Recovery Board is working with Tacoma Power to manage the Cowlitz Restoration and Recovery Grant Program for projects in the basin to ensure high-quality habitat is available for reintroduced fish.

In addition, the numbers of sea lions congregating at Bonneville Dam to eat salmon and steelhead has declined in recent years after the Marine Mammal Protection Act was changed to allow them to be killed.

As juvenile salmon and steelhead swim to the ocean–mostly in the spring and summer-they swim past birds, such as double crested cormorants and Caspian terns, trying to eat them. Despite twenty years of trying to prevent this, the birds eat about half the salmon and steelhead, especially the youngest fish. Ongoing management actions are needed.