Trump administration pulls US out of agreement to help restore salmon in
the Columbia River
[June 13, 2025] By
GENE JOHNSON
SEATTLE (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday pulled the U.S. out of
an agreement with Washington, Oregon and four American Indian tribes to
work together to restore salmon populations and boost tribal clean
energy development in the Pacific Northwest, deriding the plan as
“radical environmentalism” that could have resulted in the breaching of
four controversial dams on the Snake River.
The deal, known as the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement, was reached
in late 2023 and heralded by the Biden administration, tribes and
conservationists as historic. It allowed for a pause in decades of
litigation over the harm the federal government's operation of dams in
the Northwest has done to the fish.
Under it, the federal government said it planned to spend more than $1
billion over a decade to help recover depleted salmon runs. The
government also said that it would build enough new clean energy
projects in the Pacific Northwest to replace the hydropower generated by
the Lower Snake River dams — the Ice Harbor, Little Goose, Lower
Monumental and Lower Granite — should Congress ever agree to remove
them.
In a statement, the White House said former President Joe Biden's
decision to sign the agreement "placed concerns about climate change
above the Nation’s interests in reliable energy sources.”
Conservations groups, Democratic members of Congress and the Northwest
tribes criticized Trump's action.
“Donald Trump doesn’t know the first thing about the Northwest and our
way of life — so of course, he is abruptly and unilaterally upending a
historic agreement that finally put us on a path to salmon recovery,
while preserving stable dam operations for growers and producers, public
utilities, river users, ports and others throughout the Northwest,"
Democratic U.S. Sen. Patty Murray of Washington said in a written
statement. “This decision is grievously wrong and couldn’t be more
shortsighted.”
Basin was once world's greatest salmon-producing river system
The Columbia River Basin, an area roughly the size of Texas, was once
the world’s greatest salmon-producing river system, with at least 16
stocks of salmon and steelhead. Today, four are extinct and seven are
listed under the Endangered Species Act. Another iconic but endangered
Northwest species, a population of killer whales, also depend on the
salmon.
The construction of the first dams on the main Columbia River, including
the Grand Coulee and Bonneville dams in the 1930s, provided jobs during
the Great Depression, as well as hydropower and navigation. The dams
made the town of Lewiston, Idaho, the most inland seaport on the West
Coast, and many farmers in the region rely on barges to ship their
crops.
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 But the dams are also main culprit
behind the salmon’s decline, and fisheries scientists have concluded
that breaching the dams in eastern Washington on the Snake River,
the largest tributary of the Columbia, would be the best hope for
recovering them, providing the fish with access to hundreds of miles
of pristine habitat and spawning grounds in Idaho.
The tribes, which reserved the right to fish in their usual and
accustomed grounds when they ceded vast amounts of land in their
19th century treaties with the U.S., warned as far back as the late
1930s that the salmon runs could disappear, with the fish no longer
able to access spawning grounds upstream.
“This agreement was designed to foster collaborative and informed
resource management and energy development in the Pacific Northwest,
including significant tribal energy initiatives,” Yakama Tribal
Council Chairman Gerald Lewis said in a written statement. “The
Administration’s decision to terminate these commitments echoes the
federal government’s historic pattern of broken promises to tribes,
and is contrary to President Trump’s stated commitment to domestic
energy development.”
Republicans in region opposed agreement
Northwestern Republicans in Congress had largely opposed the
agreement, warning that it would hurt the region's economy, though
in 2021 Republican Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho proposed removing the
earthen berms on either side of the four Lower Snake River dams to
let the river flow freely, and to spend $33 billion to replace the
benefits of the dams.
“Today’s action by President Trump reverses the efforts by the Biden
administration and extreme environmental activists to remove the
dams, which would have threatened the reliability of our power grid,
raised energy prices, and decimated our ability to export grain to
foreign markets," Rep. Dan Newhouse, a Republican from Washington,
said in a news release.
Tribes, environmentalists vow to fight for salmon
The tribes and the environmental law firm Earthjustice, which
represents conservation, clean energy and fishing groups in
litigation against the federal government, said they would continue
working to rebuild salmon stocks.
“Unfortunately, this short-sighted decision to renege on this
important agreement is just the latest in a series of
anti-government and anti-science actions coming from the Trump
administration,” Earthjustice Senior Attorney Amanda Goodin said.
"This administration may be giving up on our salmon, but we will
keep fighting to prevent extinction and realize win-win solutions
for the region.”
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