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A billion dollar plan to help restore depleted salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest has been formally launched by the US federal government, leaders of four Columbia River Basin tribes, and the governors of Oregon and Washington. The Columbia River Basin 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 as endangered. The Columbia Basin Restoration Initiative “lays out a pathway to restore salmon and steelhead to healthy and abundant levels and moves forward with the necessary green energy transition in a socially just and equitable way,” said Jonathan W. Smith, chairman of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation.
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