After Largest Dam Removal in U.S. History, This River Is Thriving | National Geographic

Shinook 6055, coo, 115. We got 108. It depends on the species, but we have a broad range, and they're all kids, from infants to basically teenagers. Seeing the evolution is what it's ended up being.

In particular, in the Nearshore, it's been a dramatic transformation. The Nearshore is a very important bridge between the upland and marine systems, and it is a critical link between the two that kind of make both work. If you think about the Elwha Watershed and marine systems as being a house, the Nearshore component of it would be the nursery. It provides this wonderful little oasis of habitat, food, and refuge. It's a very quiet place in a very tumultuous world.

I've been working in the Nearshore; I think I started my first conversations about the Elwha Nearshore in 1995. So just about 21 years. We're going to do four total. For our second one, we're actually going to walk up and around the corner and do a second set just around the corner here. We'll see Shinook salmon, coo, uh, steelhead, chum, bull trout, and all of those are federally listed as being endangered species.

Going back, the lateral L, the Elwha dam removals, isn't just about pulling dams for fish passage, although that's certainly a big part of it. It's also about liberating wood and liberating sediment. In the Nearshore, those two elements are what make our beaches. They're what make our kelp beds; they're what make our eelgrass beds. Those habitats are the things that are so critical for the function of the Nearshore.

One hundred years of sediment that's been trapped up in the wed is roughly the same as eight stadium fulls of sediment. Now that the dams are out, the visual aspect of it is so dramatic that the Nearshore has actually become the poster child for the entire dam removal project. This is the largest dam removal in the nation, and certainly the first of its kind. Nobody knew what was going to happen, but the good part is that the ecosystem is going to be restored from this action.