Tribes Condemn Trump for Backing Out of Columbia River Deal for Salmon Recovery

Time is running out for wild salmon in the Columbia River Basin in the Pacific Northwest. Their populations, as well as those of some other native fish, have been declining for decades. Now, President Donald Trump is attacking the progress that had been made to restore those once-abundant salmon runs.

In June 2025, Trump signed a memorandum signaling his administration’s unwillingness to consider dam removal on the lower Snake River, a tributary of the Columbia River, and reneging on a landmark agreement that would have provided more than a billion dollars over the next decade to Pacific Northwest tribes for renewable energy projects and salmon recovery.

The federal government entered into the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement under the Biden administration in December 2023 after two years of negotiations. Other parties to the agreement include environmental advocates; Oregon; Washington; and the Umatilla, Nez Perce, Warm Springs, and Yakama tribes. Those tribes entered into treaties with the U.S. government in the mid-1850s, ceding land but maintaining a perpetual right to their fishing grounds in the Columbia River Basin. The government has failed to ensure the tribal fishing rights it promised to protect in those treaties.

Yakama Nation Tribal Council Chair Gerald Lewis said in a statement that the Trump administration’s withdrawal “echoes the federal government’s historic pattern of broken promises to tribes.” Still, others who were involved in negotiations to secure that agreement have vowed to continue efforts to restore salmon populations and fulfill treaty obligations even as the federal government seeks to undermine them.

“The Trump administration’s decision to pull out of this agreement is short-sighted and regrettable,” Miles Johnson, legal director at Columbia Riverkeeper, told Truthout. “But folks in the Pacific Northwest who care about salmon, and salmon cultures and our rivers, we don’t get to stop working on this just because it becomes more challenging.”

Dozens of hydroelectric dams built beginning almost a century ago on the Columbia River and its largest tributary, the Snake River, eliminated spawning grounds, blocked fish passage between spawning and rearing habitats, and altered river ecology in ways that can impair a salmon’s immune system or undermine their natural migration instincts. More recently, climate change has placed additional stress on salmon populations.

The dams in the Columbia River Basin have been disastrous for fish populations: The number of wild Chinook salmon on the Snake River fell from about 90,000 in the mid-1950s, when there was just one dam on the waterway, to a mere 10,000 in 1980, seven additional dams later. Four species of salmon in the Columbia River Basin have been listed for protection under the Endangered Species Act since 1991.

Congress acknowledged that wild salmon populations in the Columbia River Basin were dwindling and committed to funding hatcheries meant to stop their decline more than 80 years ago. But the facilities have fallen short of that goal. Today, even the hatcheries are threatened, as salmon survival rates have dropped so low that some struggle to collect enough fish for breeding.

“The truth is that extinction of salmon populations is happening now,” Shannon Wheeler, chairman of the Nez Perce Tribe, said in a June 2025 statement in response to the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement.

Experts now agree that dam removal is essential to stop the decline of native fish populations. One proposal, in particular, which argues for the removal of four dams on the lower Snake River in southeastern Washington, has garnered widespread support from scientists and advocates, as well as other tribal leaders. “We’ve learned over the last 30 to 40 years of studying these fish intensely that those four dams on the lower Snake River are four dams too many,” Johnson told Truthout.

The Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement stopped short of calling for the removal of those dams, but it committed to meaningful steps in that direction. The agreement promised funding to study and develop solutions to mitigate the effects of dam breaching on transportation, recreation, irrigation and energy production in the region. It also committed funding to tribal-led alternative energy projects, which could have compensated for the eventual winddown of the hydroelectric dams.

“The concepts behind that agreement remain a really responsible, well-thought-out and careful path that sought to ensure a win-win scenario for all the different constituencies that depend on a healthy Columbia River,” Michael Garrity, special assistant at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), told Truthout.

Even though the agreement takes what Garrity and other experts characterize as a measured approach, Trump called it “radical environmentalism” in an effort to slander it and labeled concerns about climate change “misplaced” in his memorandum.

Critical funding will be lost with the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the agreement. This includes $500 million to improve underfunded and aging hatcheries across the Pacific Northwest and $100 million for wild fish restoration efforts. Much of the promised federal funding would have been disbursed via the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), a federal agency that operates like a business, marketing power from dams on the Columbia River.

Still, many aspects of the agreement will move forward in some form thanks to continued buy-in from state and tribal governments and the committed backing of environmental advocates. “The partnership between our four tribes and the states of Oregon and Washington endures,” said Jeremy Takala, chair of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission and a tribal councilman of the Yakama Nation, in a statement. “We are still united in the cause of protecting salmon and rivers.”

Amanda Goodin, an attorney at Earthjustice representing the environmental advocates that signed the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement, echoed Takala. “The NGOs, states, and tribes are not going to quit on this issue,” she told Truthout. “We’re going to be looking for other avenues for the next few years and waiting for the moment that we have a federal administration that actually cares about our natural heritage, obligations to tribes, and following the law, and we’ll be ready when that time comes.”

Those other avenues are almost sure to include legal battles over the impact of hydroelectric dams on salmon in the Columbia River Basin. Litigation had been ongoing for decades before it was halted as part of the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement. Federal agencies have lost in court in previous cases. Even John Hairston, administrator and CEO of BPA, welcomed the agreement when it was signed, saying it would help provide “a reliable, affordable power supply to the Pacific Northwest” and put an end to “costly, unpredictable litigation.” Now, Goodin told Truthout, “It’s likely we’re going to see continued litigation.”

Earthjustice is also advocating for Columbia River Basin fish in Congress, where a series of bills have been introduced that could further undermine plans laid out in the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement. “Those bills are not just salmon extinction bills, they’re also anti-solution bills,” Cameron Walkup, an associate legal representative working for Earthjustice in Washington, D.C., told Truthoutof the Northwest Energy Security Act, the Defending Our Dams Act, and the Protecting Our Water Energy Resources Act. “These bills would essentially double down on what the president did in June in terms of trying to turn back the clock on progress toward comprehensive solutions for salmon recovery, and also dealing with interconnected issues like making sure we have reliable and affordable energy.”

Columbia Riverkeeper, Earthjustice, and NGO partners are engaged in organizing sign-on campaigns to demonstrate support for dam removal and oppose the harmful bills introduced in Congress. Walkup also told Truthout that his organization is prepared to engage with members of Congress if it appears the bills could garner enough support to come to a hearing. “We’re certainly doing everything we can to uplift all the issues with these bills to make sure that if Republicans do choose to make this part of their agenda, that they’re fully opposed by the Democrats and don’t make it through Congress,” he told Truthout.

For their part, Washington’s state agencies responsible for studying the effects of dam breaching on the lower Snake River are continuing that work even as federal partners have withdrawn. “WDFW, working with the governor’s office, is committed to finding a path forward to restore healthy and abundant salmon and steelhead in the Columbia Basin in a way that respects and addresses the non-salmon benefits of the river,” Garrity told Truthout.

Johnson of Columbia Riverkeeper said his message to those who are concerned about the Trump administration’s decision to renege on the historic Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement is simple: “We absolutely need our representatives to understand how much people care about salmon and steelhead and having enough fish in our rivers that people can go fishing, we can meet our obligations to tribes and protect tribal cultures,” he told Truthout. “That starts with individuals, businesses, leaders and anyone else making their voices heard. It’s critical to build a groundswell of support.”

This story was originally published by Truthout.