The Columbia–Snake is one of the most expensive endangered-species efforts in United States history. It is also one of the clearest failures.
For more than thirty years, Snake River salmon and steelhead have been protected under the Endangered Species Act. Over that time the federal government wrote recovery plan after recovery plan, spent more than $20 billion, and defended its approach through two decades of litigation. The fish are still declining toward extinction.
Doing something is not the same as recovering fish.
Snake River sockeye were listed as endangered in 1991. Its symbol is "Lonesome Larry" — the single sockeye that returned to Idaho's Sawtooth Basin in 1992, from whom the remnant run was rebuilt by hand. Snake River spring/summer and fall Chinook followed in 1992, and Basin steelhead in 1997.
A full human generation has grown up since these fish were first declared at risk of vanishing.
The government's blueprint for these fish is the federal Biological Opinion on dam operations. Federal courts threw it out again and again — six times in all.
Judge James Redden rejected the 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2010 plans, once calling the government's work a "cynical and transparent attempt to avoid responsibility for the decline" of the salmon. Judge Michael Simon threw out the next plan in 2016. Two decades of planning and lawsuits — and the fish kept falling the entire time.
The Bonneville Power Administration has spent more than $20 billion on Columbia River fish and wildlife since 1980 — among the costliest endangered-species efforts in the nation — with roughly another $9 billion in taxpayer money to run the mitigation hatcheries. About 30% of the region's public power bills now go to fish-and-wildlife funding.
In 2023, a major study found that billions poured into hatcheries and habitat had failed to improve wild Columbia Basin salmon stocks. The money was real. The recovery was not.
A 2024 analysis by Nez Perce fisheries scientists found Snake River spring/summer Chinook declining about 6% per year, and steelhead about 11% per year. Federal scientists mark a population as facing "quasi-extinction" below 50 returning adults for four straight years; by that measure, roughly 29% of Chinook populations and 27% of steelhead populations are already there or nearly there.
In 1992, 12,673 wild spring/summer Chinook returned past Lower Granite Dam. In 2021, just 6,556 did — a 48% decline across the very decades they were "protected."
Everyone agrees the status quo failed. The most common answer is to tear out the four lower Snake River dams. We draw a different conclusion.
The failure of the Columbia–Snake is not proof that we must remove the dams. It is proof that managing by regulatory minimum and cycling lawsuits does not rebuild fish — and that the one thing never seriously tried at scale is modern active recovery paired with real passage engineering. Adult salmon already climb the ladders at high rates; the losses fall on the young fish heading downstream through turbines. Fish-friendly turbines are already proving survival above 98% for those juveniles, with no loss of power generation. Add modern bypass and next-generation ladders, and a dam can keep the clean power flowing and pass its fish.
The real choice was never "breach the dams or lose the salmon." It is: engineer the passage, and actively rebuild the runs.
We hold this to an honest standard. The dams do harm fish — especially young salmon moving downstream through turbines and warm, slow reservoirs — and breaching them would genuinely help. Pretending otherwise would forfeit our credibility.
The lawsuits were not frivolous either; they repeatedly exposed that the government's own plans were inadequate. And the dams deliver real public value — clean, firm, low-carbon power, navigation, and irrigation. That value is exactly why the honest answer is engineered passage, not a false choice between salmon and the grid. Our claim is narrow and defensible: after thirty years and twenty billion dollars, passive management demonstrably failed, and active recovery with fish-friendly passage is the under-tried path that lets a capable society keep both the power and the salmon.
The Columbia–Snake is the largest, most expensive version of the same philosophy that shapes salmon policy across the West, including here on our home waters: manage the decline, litigate the margins, resist active intervention. It is the deep case behind our stance — fish passage, not dam removal — and a companion to what the California Delta shows about managing water the same way.
We would rather learn from it than repeat it. On the Skykomish and beyond, our answer is active recovery — habitat, passage, and broodstock — before our runs become another line on the scoreboard.
Every figure on this page is drawn from public, authoritative records:
Questions about our facts and figures? Contact us.