Recovering a Lost River: Removing Dams, Rewilding Salmon, Revitalizing Communities

by Steven Hawley

A powerful argument for why dam removal makes good scientific, economic, and environmental sense—and requires our urgent attentionThe Snake River, flowing through the Northwest, was once one of the world's greatest salmon rivers. As recently as a hundred years ago, it retained some of its historic bounty with seven million fish coming home to spawn there. Now, due to damming for hydroelectricity over the past fifty years, the salmon population has dropped close to extinction. Efforts at salmon recovery, through fish ladders, hatcheries, and even trucking them over the dams, have failed. Hawley argues that the solution for the Snake River lies in dam removal, pitting the power authority and Army Corps of Engineers against a collection of conservationists, farmers, commercial and recreational fishermen, and the Nez Perce tribe. He also demonstrates the interconnectedness of the river's health to Orca whales in Puget Sound, local economies, fresh water rights, and energy independence. This regional battle has garnered national interest, and is part of a widespread river-restoration movement that stretches from Maine's Kennebec to California's Klamath. In one instance, Butte Creek salmon rebounded from a paltry fourteen fish to twenty thousand within just a few years of rewilding their river, showing the incredible resiliency of nature when given the slightest chance. In this timely book, Hawley shows how river restoration, with dam removal as its centerpiece, is not only virtuous ecological practice, but a growing social and economic enterprise.

Genres: Environment, Nonfiction, Science

282 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Steven Hawley, an environmental journalist, was among the first to write about the historic agreement to tear out Edwards Dam on the Kennebec River in Maine. Since then, his work has appeared in High Country News, Bear Deluxe, National Fisherman, OnEarth, Arizona Quarterly, the Oregonian, and Missoula Independent. He lives with his family along the Columbia River.

Reviews

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Last December I read Hawley's recent book, Cracked, about the current fight for removing the dams on the Snake River. This volume, written more than a decade earlier, is essential background information that I wish I had read first. It provides great detail (and citations) regarding the history of the major rivers of the Northwest, their role in indigenous communities, and the hundred and fifty year state and federal actions to take over, and dam, these waterways and destroy their ecosystems in the (arguable) interest of cheaper electricity and carrying goods by barge to the Pacific. Yes, Hawley has a strong partisan perspectivee - but he backs it up with lots of research and personal investigation.

Thanks, Doug!

[Taylor Kennedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book by what appears to be a fellow hood riverite! What a holistic and damming review of our current hydropower system. This book dismantles dams, ecologically, economically, culturally. Basically every-way except literally! I felt a real mourning for my chosen home reading this book, but it felt necessary and empowering to get a full story!!

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really good introduction to the issues with damming in the Columbia and Snake River basin.

[Chelsea Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very dense and more textbook esque book, but it contained a lot of good information. I think it's a great starting point for learning about the history of dam removal and salmon politics in the PNW, but since it was written over 10 years ago, there is a lot more research you will need to do afterwards to understand the current state of salmon and dam politics.

[Tony Latham · Rating 5 out of 5]

A horrible story –but a great book. If you have any interest in West Coast salmon/steelhead, political graft, the Columbia River, and its dams based on WW2 era thinking, you need to put this book on your read list. Hawley did a great job researching this beast –I recognize numerous players associated with this river battle. I read Reed Burkholder's book on the economics of removing the lower Snake dams several years ago and have followed the politics of the issue ever since. There are several issues and facts that I was not aware of involving North West fish/dams/politics and the people that Hawley discussed. READ it. -Tony Latham author of Trafficking, a Memoir of an Undercover Game Warden.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

To be fair, I am probably the ideal audience for this book, but I still think it's great.
Hawley goes into a lot of depth and detail without becoming too technical or scientific and losing the reader. And he includes an extremely broad range of examples and case studies, as well as a number of interviews with people from differing perspectives and backgrounds. Really well done.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

fantastic book from a gorge local.

[Joel · Rating 3 out of 5]

mostly history, some recent, good background on entrenched vested interests fighting to keep the dams, potential flooding problems in lewiston, id from silting behind the dams