Photo Credit: David Moskowitz
A legal victory, and a long term plan for salmon recovery.
By: Miles Johnson
I’m sharing two updates on our work to protect and restore the Columbia River’s iconic salmon runs. One — a recent court ruling — should make it easier for endangered salmon to migrate to the ocean this year. The other is aimed at long-term efforts to recover healthy and abundant salmon runs to support robust food webs and fisheries, and keep America’s promises to Tribes.
A Legal Victory
On February 26, 2026 — in response to a request by Columbia Riverkeeper and many others — a court ordered additional protections for Columbia River salmon. Specifically, the court ordered more frequent “spill” from dams on the Columbia and Lower Snake rivers throughout the year and blocked federal agencies’ proposal to operate the reservoirs at higher pool elevations. The upshot: Baby salmon will travel downstream faster and more safely in 2026.
Many runs of Columbia River basin salmon are critically low or in danger of extinction. In granting additional protections for fish, the court noted that federal salmon policy is moving in the “wrong direction” and scolded Bonneville Power and the Army Corps of Engineers for their “disappointing history of government avoidance and manipulation instead of sincere efforts at solving the problem and genuinely remediating the harm.”
Columbia Riverkeeper sought these protections from the court alongside other conservation, fishing, and clean energy groups all represented by Earthjustice, as well as the State of Oregon, the State of Washington, the Nez Perce Tribe, and the Yakama Nation. These groups asked the court to protect salmon after Trump reneged last year on the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement, a historic agreement aimed at restoring healthy and abundant salmon runs while investing $1 billion in the region.
Hydropower lobbyists were quick to criticize the court’s ruling, using hyperbolic rhetoric and scare tactics about blackouts and energy price spikes. But the court carefully considered and rejected these arguments, noting that most of the fish protection measures have actually been implemented from time to time over the years “without such negative repercussions, and the Court does not anticipate such calamities will ensue from the current [ ] order.”
To be clear: This victory is a stop gap. These court-ordered tweaks to dam operations are not enough to recover salmon or meet the region’s goals of healthy and abundant fish. But this victory will help prevent the extinction and further decline of Columbia River salmon runs while the region considers how to achieve more impactful conservation measures, like Lower Snake River dam removal.
Moving Toward Recovery and Abundance
Much of the rhetoric, and legal wrangling, over Columbia River salmon is about preventing extinction. And that makes sense: Nearly everyone agrees that extinction is bad. Several runs of Columbia River salmon are already extinct. Others are in immediate danger of extinction. And the Endangered Species Act, one of the key legal tools for protecting salmon, is concerned with preventing extinction. But for fish that are so central to ecosystems, cultures, communities, and economies here in the Northwest, avoiding extinction is not nearly enough.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council (NPCC) is charged with protecting, mitigating, and enhancing salmon runs and other wildlife affected by the hydrosystem. Its goal is more ambitious than stopping extinction. In 1987, the NPCC conducted an exhaustive study of the hydrosystem’s impacts on salmon and set an interim goal to “double the runs” from 2.5 to 5 million fish returning each year on average. To help achieve that interim goal, the NPCC creates, and periodically updates, a document called the Fish and Wildlife Program — a blueprint for region-wide efforts to restore healthy and abundant salmon runs.
Columbia Riverkeeper recently submitted 20-page detailed technical and legal comments to the NPCC regarding the draft 2026 version of the Fish and Wildlife Program. You can read those comments here. Some of the key points are:
- The final 2026 Fish and Wildlife Program should adopt all of the Recommendations of the State and Tribal fisheries managers, including enhanced spill and other hydropower operations necessary to protect salmon.
- We support the NPCC keeping its long-standing interim salmon abundance goal of “doubling the runs” from 2.5 to 5 million adult salmon per year. (Bonneville Power and other hydropower interests are lobbying the NPCC to delete the interim goal.)
- The region has made no meaningful progress toward the NPCC’s interim salmon abundance goal in the last 20 years. The draft 2026 Fish and Wildlife Program will also not achieve this interim goal because it does not propose materially new or different strategies.
- Transformational changes — including Lower Snake River dam removal — to the Columbia and Snake River hydrosystem are necessary to meet the Council’s interim salmon abundance goal.
The draft 2026 Fish and Wildlife Program clearly needs some improvement, and the NPCC suffers from a lack of regulatory authority and ideologically divided leadership. But like salmon, we aren’t afraid to swim upstream against long odds. Columbia Riverkeeper will keep fighting for healthy, abundant salmon runs — the kind that support vibrant fisheries, cultures, and ecosystems.
