Video: Good News for the Elwha River

Return of the River trailer, April 2012 from Jessica Plumb on Vimeo.

Earlier this year, we posted a trailer for Jessica Plumb’s upcoming documentary “Return of the River,” which explores the events leading up to and the ramifications of the removal of two dams on Washington’s Elwha River. Here’s a longer version that gets deeper into some of the issues involved.

There’s actually pretty big news on the Elwha in the last week: biologists tracking some stocked-and-tagged steelhead discovered some wild fish spawning. The fish clearly made it past the remains of the Elwha Dam (the lower of the two) and did what nature intended:


“We’re wildly excited,” said Mike McHenry, fish habitat manager for the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe. “It just confirms what we have known all along — that these fish are quite capable of recolonizing the Elwha once we get the dams out of the way.”

It’s that kind of news that should continue to fuel the drumbeat for dam removals around the country.

Click here for the rest of the story.


Wild steelhead spawning in the Elwha River above the site of the former Elwha Dam.

AP Photo/NOAA, John McMillan

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