Miguel Guimaraes, a Shipibo-Konibo leader, has spent his life protesting palm oil plantations and other agribusiness ventures exploiting the Amazon rainforest in his homeland of Peru. Last spring, as he attended a United Nations conference on protecting human rights defenders in Chile, masked men broke into his home, stole his belongings, and set the place on fire. Guimarares returned days later to find “he will not live” spray-painted on the wall.
The U.N. special rapporteur on human rights defenders, Mary Lawlor, denounced the attack and urged Peru to guarantee Guimarare’s protection. Although Guimaraes enjoyed international support, his assailants haven’t been identified.
Guimaraes is one of 6,400 activists who endured harassment or violence for defending human rights against corporate interests. That’s according to a new report from the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre that chronicles attacks and civil violations human rights defenders worldwide have experienced over the past decade. Although Indigenous people make up 6 percent of the world population, they accounted for one-fifth of the crimes documented in the report. They also were more likely than others to be killed, particularly in Brazil, the Philippines, and Mexico.
Some of these attacks arise from the “range of ways” governments are restricting civic space and discourse and “prioritizing economic profit,” said Christen Dobson, an author of the report and co-head of the Civic Freedoms and Human Rights Defenders Programme. “Over the past 10 years, we’ve seen a consistent, sustained pattern of attacks against people who speak out against business-related human rights, risks, and harms,” he said.
Most of these attacks are reported by local organizations focused on documenting and collecting Indigenous cases, and the number of crimes against them may be higher. “The only reason we know about even a slice of the scale of attacks against defenders worldwide is because defenders themselves are sharing that information, often at great risk,” said Dobson.
Virtually every industry has a case in the database that the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre maintains. The organization has tracked companies, trade associations, and governments believed to have requested, or paid, law enforcement to intervene in peaceful protest activity. In 2023, for example, local authorities in Oaxaca, Mexico, attacked and injured members of the Union of Indigenous Communities of the Northern Zone of the Isthmus who were peacefully blocking the Mogoñe Viejo-Vixidu railway, which posed a threat to 12 Indigenous communities in the area.
The protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline saw the highest number of attacks related to a single project over the last decade, the report found. Around 100,000 people in 2016 and 2017 gathered to oppose the pipeline and were met with a campaign of harassment, intimidation, and arrest. Energy Transfer, the company that led the project, filed a defamation suit accusing Greenpeace of violating trespassing and defamation laws and coordinating the protests. In March, a jury ordered Greenpeace to pay $660 million in damages, a verdict legal experts called “wildly punitive.”
The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre cites that lawsuit as an example of companies using a legal tactic called a strategic lawsuit against public participation, or SLAPP suit, to silence dissent and harass protesters. But Energy Transfer cited that courtroom victory in its response to the nonprofit’s report: “The recent verdict against Greenpeace was also a win for the people of North Dakota who had to live through the daily harassment and disruptions caused by the protesters who were funded and trained by Greenpeace.”
Fossil fuel companies were hardly the only offenders, however. Dobson and her team identified several cases involving renewable energy sectors, where projects have been linked to nearly 365 cases of harassment and more than 100 killings of human rights defenders.
But mining, including the extraction of “transition minerals,” leads every sector in attacks on defenders. Forty percent of those killed in such crimes were Indigenous, a reflection of the fact that more than half of all critical minerals lie in or near Indigenous land.
The outsize scale of harassment and violence against Indigenous people prompted the U.N. special rapporteur to release a statement last year making clear that “a just transition to green energy must support Indigenous peoples in securing their collective land rights and self-determination over their territories, which play a vital role in biodiversity, conservation, and climate change adaptation.“
Businesses, particularly those in mining and metals, are being pressured to ensure their operations do just that. The Consolidated Mining Standard Initiative, or CSMI, for example, is a voluntary framework to improve industry policies adopted by several trade associations like the Mining Association of Canada. “The standard addresses a broad range of community risks by requiring mining operations to work with communities to identify and work together to mitigate risks faced by the community,” the association said. “Such risks include those to human rights defenders, where they exist.”
Another member of the initiative, the International Council of Mining and Metals, said it has “strengthened our member commitments on human rights defenders to explicitly include defenders in companies’ due diligence, stakeholder engagement, and security processes. Defenders often work on issues related to land, the environment, and Indigenous peoples’ rights.”
Even as this report highlights the dangers human rights defenders face, a growing need for critical minerals, mounting demand for the infrastructure to support AI, and the dismantling of regulatory oversight in the United States bring new threats. The report also makes clear that these attacks will not decrease until broad agreements to adopt and implement protections for these activists are enacted. Such policies must be accompanied by legislation designating Indigenous stewardship of their land and requiring their involvement in project consultations.
Yet Indigenous organizations tend to doubt any industry can be trusted to voluntarily participate in such efforts. In a letter sent to the CSMI, 25 human rights organizations including the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre said mandatory participation will be required to ensure robust protection of human rights defenders and relationships between industry and Indigenous peoples. “People and the environment suffer when companies are left to self-regulate with weak voluntary standards,” the letter stated.
Still, change is coming, however slowly. When Dobson and her team started tracking the harassment and violence against human rights defenders, she wasn’t aware of any companies with a policy pledging to not contribute to or assist attacks against defenders. Since then, “We’ve tracked 51 companies that have made this policy commitment,” she said. “Unfortunately that doesn’t always mean we see progress in terms of implementation of those policies.”
Editor’s notes: “A Washington state city has granted part of the Snohomish River watershed legal rights that can be enforced in court. In nearly all cases, state legislatures heavily lobbied by commercial industries have preempted the laws, rendering them unenforceable. But the Everett initiative could be the first to withstand such a challenge. Democrats, typically more open to stronger environmental protections than Republicans, currently control Washington’s Legislature and governorship.”
Efforts to apply the rights of nature in Ecuador have often failed. Legal challenges can become highly politicised and there is little legal infrastructure beyond general constitutional principles.
For example, in a case brought after road builders had dumped material into the Vilcabamba River, plaintiffs claimed to represent nature in court. However, they were not genuinely advocating for the river’s rights – their main concern was protecting their downstream property.
Ultimately, defending the rights of nature in court will be a struggle if the nature in question – the river, forest or lake – is not represented by someone with an ecocentric perspective. That means prioritising the intrinsic value of nature itself, rather than focusing on how it can serve human interests.
“According to the third Kawa, the people and the river are intrinsically linked, so Te Awa Tupua isn’t merely the river but also includes the surrounding communities — which challenges Western notions of property and human-made law. The relationship between the Iwi and the river goes beyond mere geographical proximity and includes spiritual and affective care for each other.”
Biodiversity is declining at rates unprecedented in human history. This suggests the ways we currently use to manage our natural environment are failing.
Many Indigenous peoples have long emphasised the intrinsic value of nature. In 1972, the late University of Southern California law professor Christopher Stone proposed what then seemed like a whimsical idea: to vest legal rights in natural objects to allow a shift from an anthropocentric to an intrinsic worldview.
Here’s what you need to know about one of the fastest-growing environmental and social movements worldwide—to secure legal rights for ecosystems and other parts of the natural world.
By Katie Surma
April 2, 2025
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.
“Rights of nature” is a movement aimed at advancing the understanding that ecosystems, wildlife and the Earth are living beings with inherent rights to exist, evolve and regenerate.
Legal rights are the highest form of protection in most governance systems. In the United States, humans and non-humans have enforceable legal rights, like corporations’ right to freedom of speech.
At the same time, most legal systems treat nature as rightless property that humans can own, use and destroy. That means the law views sentient species like elephants and bald eagles, as well as life-supporting ecosystems like forests and coral reefs, no differently than objects like microwaves or cars.
For the people behind the rights of nature movement, that way of thinking is deeply flawed. It’s also scientifically inaccurate.
Humans are part of nature and depend on ecosystems for survival—from the food we eat to the water we drink and air we breathe. Evolutionary biology shows that humans share a common ancestor with all other life on Earth. Forests, rivers and other biomes provide conditions for human life to thrive. And humans have always shaped the environment and have been shaped by it.
Understanding this interconnectedness is key to understanding that human flourishing ultimately depends on a healthy Earth. Rights of nature activists say most societies have forgotten that basic truth, harming their own wellbeing—and threatening their very survival—as a result.
When did this forgetting happen? Academics have traced the notion that humans are separate from, and superior to, nature back to Renaissance-era thinkers like René Descartes, who compared animals to machines. The idea is also woven into the Bible’s book of Genesis, with God giving man “dominion” over the Earth. Others point to the advent of cities, when masses of people lost regular contact with nature.
Modern legal systems have been shaped by these developments and ideas, thus institutionalizing the belief that nature is an object, or thing, beneath humans.
“Until the rightless thing receives its rights, we cannot see it as anything but a thing for the use of ‘us’—those who are holding rights at the time,” law professor Christopher Stone wrote in the seminal 1972 law review article, “Should Trees Have Standing?” Stone noted that the law has always evolved to extend rights to new groups: moving from white, property-owning men to include women, people of color and children.
In 2006, a rural, conservative Pennsylvania town plagued by industrial pollution enacted the world’s first rights of nature resolution. Since then, scores of countries—including Ecuador, Spain, Bolivia, Colombia, Panama, India, the United States and Uganda—have had court rulings or enacted laws at the national or subnational level recognizing nature’s rights.
The advocates behind these laws argue that if nature’s rights are respected, humans will benefit.
How Do Rights of Nature Laws Differ From Environmental Regulations?
In the course of human history, environmental law is a relatively young field. In the United States, it largely developed in the late 1960s in response to mass pollution wrought by industrialization. Rivers caught fire, pervasive smog blanketed cities and chemicals like DDT were sprayed indiscriminately.
Policymakers enacted legislation like the Clean Water Act and Toxic Substances Control Act to regulate human activity and limit impacts of industry on human health. Those laws did curtail pollution. But rights of nature advocates argue that those conventional laws haven’t stopped the severe environmental problems we face today, like climate change, biodiversity loss and mass pollution.
Advocates say conventional environmental laws have a central flaw: They’re designed to permit pollution. They only control how much.
Rights of nature laws start from an entirely different place. Ecosystems, wildlife and Earth itself are treated as living beings with inherent rights deserving of the highest form of legal protection. The central concern of rights of nature laws is to maintain and preserve the integrity of ecosystems, requiring governments to take a preventative, rather than a reactionary, approach.
Ecuador’s Constitutional Court has said this mandates government officials to respect what is known as the “precautionary principle,” or the idea that, absent adequate scientific evidence, it is better to avoid certain risks that could lead to irreversible damage of ecosystems.
How Do These Laws Work in Practice?
The laws do not give nature’s rights absolute primacy over all other rights and interests.
No legal right is absolute. A right to free speech ends when that speech is defamatory or incites violence. Judges balance competing rights in the decisions they make every day. Nature’s rights are no different.
Rights of nature jurisprudence is still a young field. Most countries with such laws on the books haven’t had lawsuits attempting to enforce them. It’s also important to note that not all rights of nature laws are the same—there is wide variation in how the laws are written and what rights are recognized.
But Ecuador, which constitutionalized nature’s rights in 2008, has seen dozens of cases. There, Mother Earth, or Pachamama, has a right to “integral respect for its existence and for the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, structure, functions, and evolutionary processes.”
The Ecuadorian Constitution also requires the government to prevent the “extinction of species, the destruction of ecosystems, and the permanent alteration of natural cycles.”
Not all cases have been favorable for ecosystems. Ecuador’s economy is still largely dependent on oil revenues and other extractive industries.
But Ecuadorian courts have ruled in favor of mangroves, cloud forests, rivers, endangered frogs and coastal marine ecosystems, thwarting mining operations, industrial fishing and other nature-damaging activities. In some cases, courts have ordered the government to restore damaged ecosystems. Cases decided in favor of nature usually have a compelling reason for why nature’s rights ought to prevail over competing interests, like a high risk of extinction for certain species.
In the cloud forest case, the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court explained the importance of protecting a sensitive ecosystem from mining impacts, saying: “[T]he risk in this case is not necessarily related to human beings … but to the extinction of species, the destruction of ecosystems or the permanent alteration of natural cycles.”
In deciding these cases, Ecuadorian courts have depended heavily on scientific experts and evidence. Judges have also looked holistically at the health of ecosystems, rather than at piecemeal levels of pollution—a departure from the way courts tend to evaluate conventional environmental laws.
Scientists have come to the forefront of the movement in other ways. In Panama, for instance, marine biologists were instrumental in the passage of that country’s national rights of nature law.
How Are Rights of Nature Laws Enforced?
Trees and wild animals can’t walk into a courtroom and make their case. But rights of nature laws give ecosystems and species the ability to act in their own capacity under the law with help from people, similar to other non-human entities like corporations, business partnerships, ships and nonprofits.
This is done through a longstanding concept called legal personhood. That legal construct is most commonly used to allow businesses to enter into contracts, sue, be sued, own property and, in the case of corporations, limit the liability of its shareholders.
Each of those nonhuman entities is represented by a human guardian. Similar arrangements are used for minors and incapacitated people in court proceedings.
Who Is Behind This Movement?
Indigenous peoples have been at the forefront of the movement in several ways.
The worldviews of many Indigenous cultures—that humans are part of nature and owe responsibilities to other living beings—are foundational for the movement.
Honoring and preserving those worldviews and related knowledge for centuries has been no small thing. Indigenous communities have faced a long, dark history of colonization and other attempts aimed at eradicating their culture and separating them from their territories. Today, people in many Indigenous communities are still harassed, attacked and sometimes killed for defending water and land.
Indigenous peoples have also been behind many of the laws and court rulings advancing the movement. In New Zealand, Māori people fought for a settlement with the national government, resulting in legal personhood for a river, national park and mountains.
It was Ecuador’s strong Indigenous movements that led to the country becoming the first in the world in 2008 to constitutionally recognize Mother Earth’s rights. Ecuador’s Constitutional Court has also drawn on Indigenous knowledge in deciding rights of nature cases.
Bolivia’s Indigenous movements were behind that country’s 2010 and 2012 laws recognizing the rights of Mother Earth. Enforcement of nature’s rights in Bolivia has proved difficult, however.
Across North America, many Indigenous nations have passed rights of nature laws.
And in Peru, a coalition of Indigenous women won rights for the Marañón River ecosystem, a place the oil industry has heavily polluted for decades. The fight for the Marañón River came at great personal cost for Mariluz Canaquiri Murayari, president of Huaynakana Kamatahuara Kana, and other women in the organization, who were harassed and threatened for their advocacy.
What Are the Criticisms of Rights of Nature Laws?
The biggest opposition to the movement has come from industry groups—developers, the industrial agricultural sector and other polluting industries—and politicians aligned with those interests.
Those opponents argue that giving nature a higher level of protection will impede development and lead to an explosion of litigation. In practice, that hasn’t happened. Barriers to pursuing lawsuits, like the high cost of attorney fees, are substantial.
But the laws do threaten the interests of industries and businesses that have made money off extracting from and monetizing the natural world in unsustainable ways.
Some critics of the movement have questioned whether, if nature has rights, it also has duties: Can a river be sued if it floods and harms humans? Rights of nature advocates respond to this by saying that legal rights, duties and liability are always tailored to the entity they are assigned to.
Corporations, for instance, don’t have a right to family. Nature doesn’t have the capacity to act with intent and therefore should not have legal liability for harm it causes, advocates argue.
Another prevalent charge is that the rights of nature movement is an attempt to force human societies to surrender modern comforts and technology. In practice, though, advocates have sought to rebalance human interests with the health of ecosystems by placing better guardrails around human activity, ensuring the integrity and sustainability of Earth is maintained now and into the future. Advocates argue that humanity isn’t harmed by that but benefits instead.
They also say nothing so quickly forces people to surrender modern comforts as a disaster that destroys their homes and communities, and megadisasters are far more common in a warming world.
Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’, and papal exhortation Laudate Deum, said humans have a moral duty to protect the Earth.
“For ‘we are part of nature, included in it and thus in constant interaction with it,’” Francis wrote in Laudate Deum.
Ecuadorian activists say the country’s constitutional recognition of nature’s rights has made their country more pluralistic by incorporating the worldviews of Indigenous peoples and is changing the way everyday people think about the Earth, their home.
“We now have a whole generation of young people who have grown up only knowing that nature has rights,” Ecuadorian political scientist Natalia Greene told Inside Climate News. “The law has influenced peoples’ understanding of nature and that is very powerful.”
Learn More
Follow our reporting at Inside Climate News. We’re the only newsroom we know of that has a dedicated rights of nature beat. Start here and here.
Books by Indigenous authors and ecocentric thinkers:
Our system of law and government was founded in racial-divisiveness and colonization and is dominated by corporations. The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) fights to build sustainable communities by assisting people to assert their right to a local self-government system and the Rights of Nature. Fight for a more just, Earth-centered tomorrow, today.
The Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature(GARN) is a global network of organizations and individuals committed to the universal adoption and implementation of legal systems that recognize, respect and enforce “Rights of Nature”
Banner: To protect it from mining and deforestation, Los Cedros cloud forest was awarded the same rights as people.
Editor’s note: “Birds and Offshore Wind: Developing the Offshore Wind that Birds Need”. – 2025 National Audubon Society
With up to a million birds currently being killed each year directly(which does not include indirect causes from mining and manufacturing) by wind turbines in the US, why would an organization dedicated to protecting birds say such a thing? Add on the fact that Wind facilities also require relatively large areas of land and sea. Facility development fragments and otherwise alters habitat in ways that make it unsuitable for species that have historically been present.
Report: “Conflicts of Interest” – Environmental Organizations(Audubon among them) Take Offshore Wind Industry Money
“These offshore projects, which could decimate hundreds of thousands of migratory birds, will be built by some of the largest international oil and gas companies in the world,” the group said. “Our findings take on suspended belief when one considers Ørsted’s involvement with the New Jersey Audubon Society.” The Danish company is the official sponsor of the New Jersey Audubon Society’s fundraiser, the World Series of Birding where funds are raised to support bird conservation.
Sixteen shorebird species have been reclassified to higher threat categories as the global population of migratory shorebirds across the world saw a substantial decline, according to the latest update to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
Conservation partnership BirdLife International, which helps examine the status of the world’s birds for the IUCN Red List, reassessed around half of the 254 species of shorebirds the organization currently monitors, for 2024, according to Ian Burfield, BirdLife International’s global science coordinator.
The reassessment was prompted by a study published last year that showed steep declines in many shorebird species in North America, Burfield told Mongabay via email.
“[B]ut as it only covered part of their global populations, we had to source equivalent data from elsewhere … to produce a global picture, before applying the IUCN Red List criteria to reassess their status,” Burfield said. “Most species did not need recategorizing, but of those that did, virtually all have deteriorated.”
After the latest reassessment, seven of the 16 shorebird species were categorized as “near threatened” and nine are now “vulnerable” to extinction as they experienced global population declines of 20-40% over three generations.
BirdLife International said in a statement that migratory birds are especially at risk as they follow specific migration flyways or routes and stop along the way to rest and feed at certain sites that now face threats like habitat loss and climate change impacts.
“While many of these shorebirds remain numerous and are still commonly encountered along their flyways, new analyses of data from long-term monitoring schemes reveal that the global populations of some species have declined by more than a third in recent decades,” Burfield said in the statement.
Among those that have now been moved into a higher “threatened” category of vulnerable are the gray plover(Pluvialis squatarola)and the curlew sandpiper (Calidris ferruginea), both of which breed in various parts of the Arctic and migrate globally during their nonbreeding seasons. They both face threats from habitat loss and degradation, hunting, and climate change impacts.
The Hudsonian godwit (Limosa haemastica), a large shorebird that breeds in northern Canada and Alaska and migrates to South America during its nonbreeding months, is also now considered vulnerable. The IUCN notes in its assessment of the species that the bird’s population is seeing a “significant decline … most severely noted in numbers recorded at migratory sites in North America.”
BirdLife International said in its statement that protecting shorebirds is also important for the coastal communities that depend on the same habitats as the birds.
‘The perilous declines of migratory birds are a sign that the integrity of flyways is deteriorating,” Burfield said. “Losing the network of habitats that migratory birds depend on to rest and feed during their long journeys could have severe consequences for the millions of people that rely on these sites, as well as the birds.’’
Kristine Sabillo is a wire reporter for Mongabay. She has been a multimedia journalist for more than a decade and has produced political, science and environment content for the online, print, television and radio newsrooms of leading media organizations in the Philippines. Feedback: Use this form to send a message to this author. If you want to post a public comment, you can do that at the bottom of the article page.
Editor’s note: This year’s biannual Biodiversity COP was in Cali, Colombia, a country with the dubious distinction of topping the list of the number of environmental activists killed by a country in both 2022 (60) and 2023 (79) and will probably have that dubious honor this year with a continuingly rising number of (115) as of November 7th.
BOGOTÁ, Colombia — While music played in Bogotá’s streets and a sense of victory filled the air after a long protest, Ana Graciela received a new appointment on her calendar: the funeral of Carlos Andrés Ascué Tumbo.
Nicknamed Lobo (meaning “wolf” in Spanish), the esteemed Indigenous guardian and educational coordinator was killed Aug. 29, while his fellow guardians, the Kiwe Thegnas (or Indigenous Guard of Cauca) were protesting for better security in Cauca, Colombia. The region has increasingly become dangerous with incursions by illegal armed groups.
“The situation is tough. Women and children are being killed [almost] every day,” said Ana Graciela Tombé, coordinator of the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca.
The Bogotá protest gathered more than 4,000 people, in what is known as a minga in the Andean tradition, against escalating violence in the region. After eight days, on Aug. 28, the Indigenous communities succeeded in getting President Gustavo Petro to sign a new decree, the Economic and Environmental Territorial Authority, which grants Indigenous territories greater autonomy to take judicial action against violence within their lands.
But the sentiment is bittersweet for the Indigenous Nasa and Misak activists in Ana’s homeland of Cauca, particularly in Pueblo Nuevo, a nationally recognized Indigenous territory (resguardo). They’ve lost a dear leader and role model, impassioned with protecting their ancestral territory, forests and youth from illegal armed groups.
Labeled the deadliest country for environmental defenders in 2023, Carlos, 30, was the 115th social leader killed in Colombia this year, according to the Development and Peace Institute, Indepaz.
Although the police investigation into his death is still underway, members of his community say they believe Carlos was the latest victim of armed groups and drug traffickers the Nasa people have struggled with for more than 40 years. Mongabay spoke with these members of the community, including Carlos’ family and friends, to gather more information on his life and killing that received little attention in the media.
One of Carlos’ close friends leans on the coffin. Image by Tony Kirby.Musicians play Carlos’ favorite music. Image by Tony Kirby.
Pueblo Nuevo is located in the central mountain range of the Andes in the Cauca department, which today has become a hub for drug trafficking and illicit plant cultivation. This is due to its proximity to drug trafficking routes to ship drugs to international markets, the absence of state presence and the remoteness of the mountains.
The loss of Carlos is both physical and spiritual, a close friend of Carlos, Naer Guegia Sekcue, told Monagaby. He left behind a void in the lives of his family which they are trying to fill with love, Naer said, and the community and guardians feel like they lost a part of their rebellion against armed groups.
The ‘Wolf’
Carlos was a member of the Indigenous Guard since his childhood. The children’s section of the Guard is called semillas, meaning “seeds,” for how they’ll fruit into the next generation of leaders protecting their territory.
He met his wife, Lina Daknis, through mutual friends at university. Lina, though not of Indigenous heritage, said she fell in love with his rebellious spirit, devotion and commitment to Indigenous rights. When Lina became pregnant, the couple decided to raise their daughter in the Indigenous reserve, Pueblo Nuevo.
For many in this Indigenous community, their lands and forests are far more than mere sustenance; they hold deep traditional and spiritual significance. Among the Nasa people, one significant ritual involves burying the umbilical cord under stones of a sacred fire (tulpa), symbolically tying them to their ancestral territories. According to the sources Mongabay spoke to, they consider that the lands and forests do not belong to them but are a loan from their children they are entrusted to protect.
Carlos was fully dedicated to this Indigenous Guard, Lina said.
Many days, he would get up in the middle of the night to patrol the territory. While facing well-equipped armed groups, the Indigenous Guard remained unarmed. They carry a ceremonial wooden baton, adorned with green and white strings as symbols of Indigenous identity. Carlos was particularly outspoken against illegal armed groups and coca cultivation. Faced with their invasions and deforestation on their territory, the Guard also took on the role of environmental defenders.
Coca cultivation, as done by armed groups to produce cocaine, not only impacts lives, but also the environment. The traditionally sacred crop is now tied to violence and degradation in the region.
According to Colombia’s Ministry of Justice, 48% of cultivation is concentrated in special management areas, including national parks, collective territories and forest reserves. Between 2022 and 2023, coca cultivation caused the deforestation of 11,829 hectares (29,200 acres) of forested land, according to the latest report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. This deforestation increased by 10% in 2023 and threatens biodiversity, placing more than 50 species at risk of extinction, the Ministry of Justice stated at the COP16 U.N. biodiversity conference.
In one instance, Carlos and the Guard destroyed coca plants, took photos and uploaded videos to social media. Shortly after, his family began receiving threats from anonymous people on social media, warning Carlos to be careful. Lina now said she believes these threats came from dissident groups profiting from coca cultivation.
Pueblo Nuevo is located in the central mountain range of the Andes in the Cauca department, which today has become a hub for drug trafficking and illicit plant cultivation. Image by Tony Kirby.
In Cauca, several dissident groups are active, including Estado Central Mayor and the Dagoberto Ramos Front. These factions emerged following the 2016 peace agreement and consist of former FARC guerrillas who either rejected or abandoned the reintegration process. Law enforcement say their presence poses a persistent threat. Most recently, in May, a police station in Caldono was attacked, with local authorities suspecting the involvement of the Dagoberto Ramos Front.
Despite the danger, Carlos never stopped his work.
“I told him to leave the Guard, to go to another country, that they would kill him,” said his mother, Diana Tumbo. “But he didn’t leave us nor the Guard.”
Carlos’ mother calls for the unity of the people in the fight against violence. Image by Tony Kirby.
The seeds of tomorrow
The road to the Carlos’ home is surrounded by peaceful landscapes: small villages, chicken restaurants and hand-built huts. But the graffiti on walls — “FARC EP” (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, People’s Army) and “ELN Presente” (National Liberation Army, Present) — are stark reminders of the violence. Despite the peace agreement signed between the FARC and the Colombian government in 2016, violence has resurged in Cauca.
Carlos saw the armed groups as a destructive force to youth by recruiting minors.
According to the annual report of the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights, armed groups forcibly recruited at least 71 Indigenous children in 2023. Oveimar Tenorio, leader of the Indigenous Guard, said the armed groups no longer have the political ideology that once defined the FARC. Instead, their attacks on the Indigenous Guard are driven by profit and control of drug routes.
“We are an obstacle for them,” he told Mongabay.
The graffiti reads “FARC – EP,” which stands for “Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army.” An man sits on a bench in a square in Jamundí, Colombia. For decades, violence has been a part of daily life for Colombians. Image by Tony Kirby.
Carlos became an educational coordinator, supporting teachers with Indigenous knowledge programs and organized workshops for the schools in the Sath Tama Kiwe Indigenous Territory. He believed in educating youth not just with academic knowledge, but with a sense of pride in their Indigenous heritage and the need to protect their land, Naer said.
Carlos encouraged the young people not to feel ashamed of being Indigenous, but instead to learn from their own culture. He always carried a book by Manuel Quintín Lame, a historical Indigenous Nasa leader from Cauca who defended Indigenous autonomy in the early 20th century.
But Carlos’ approach was one of tenderness; he was always listening to his students and fighting for a better future for the youth. “He was convinced that real change started from the bottom up, through children and the youth,” Naer said.
People show support for Carlos, demanding justice for him. Image by Tony Kirby.
Murder of the ‘Wolf’
His friends and family said Carlos’ actions made him a target.
On Aug. 29, 2024, Carlos went down to the village of Pescador, Caldono, to pick up his daughter from swimming lessons. It was a peaceful moment: mother, father and daughter having a family meal at a small restaurant. Afterward, Carlos went to refuel his motorbike at the gas station.
Suddenly, a stranger approached his wife in the restaurant, she said, asking, ‘Are you the woman who is with the man with the long hair? Something has happened, but I can’t say what.’
Carlos Andrés Ascué Tumbo of the Andes Mountains was shot in the head.
The Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca quickly blamed “criminal structures” linked to dissident FARC groups, particularly the Jaime Martínez and Dagoberto Ramos factions. However, the police investigation is ongoing, and the Fiscalía General de la Nación (Office of the Attorney General), which is overseeing the case, has not shared details with the public or Mongabay.
Mongabay approached Fiscalía General de la Nación and local authorities for comment but did not receive one by the time of publication.
Sept. 1, in a small village perched on a hillside, marked the date of Carlos’ funeral. Fellow members of the Indigenous Guard, wearing blue vests and carrying their batons, lined the dusty roads. They formed a solemn procession from Carlos’ house down to the cemetery with about 1,000 people walking around them through Pueblo Nuevo.
“We want to show our strength,” said Karen Julian, a university student in Cauca who didn’t know Carlos personally but felt compelled to attend his funeral. Along with others, she boarded a brightly painted chiva bus to Carlos’ home village, where he was laid to rest.
Members of the Indigenous Guard, carrying batons, line the streets of Pueblo Nuevo, accompanying Carlos on his final journey to his grave. Image by Tony Kirby.
Children holding flowers led the way of the procession, followed by a cross and then the coffin. A woman rang the church bell and people chanted the slogan to resist armed groups: “Until when? Until forever!”
At the covered sports field at the center of the village, the funeral transformed into a political rally. “I will not allow another young person to die!” Carlos’ mother shouted to the audience. “I demand justice.” She spoke of her worries for her granddaughter, Carlos’ daughter, who stills had many plans with her father. She called on the community to stand united against the violence that has taken so many lives.
As Carlos’ coffin was lowered into the ground, the crowd began to swell, pressing in tightly with his 6-year-old daughter at the front row of the mass. All were watching as the coffin reached its final destination.
“Carlos’ death was not in vain,” Naer said. “The youth understand that they must follow his path. The younger generations will continue preserving the Indigenous traditions while defending our territories and rights.”
The last look: Carlos’ daughter watches her father before he is buried, while his parents cry beside the coffin. Image by Tony Kirby.
Banner image: Carlos’ fellow guardians carry his coffin; they fought shoulder to shoulder to protect the Indigenous territories against illegal armed groups. Image by Tony Kirby.
KLAMATH, CALIFORNIA—Brook M. Thompson was just 7 years old when she witnessed an apocalypse.
“A day after our world renewal ceremony, we saw all these fish lined up on the shores, just rotting in piles,” says Thompson, a Yurok tribal member who is also Karuk and living in present-day Northern California. “This is something that’s never happened in our oral history, since time immemorial.”
During the 2002 fish kill in the Klamath River, an estimated 30,000 to 70,000 salmon died when the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation diverted water to farms instead of letting it flow downstream. This catastrophic event catalyzed a movement to remove four dams that had choked the river for nearly a century.
Now, that decades-long tribal-led movement has finally come to fruition. As of Oct. 5, the four lower Klamath hydroelectric dams have been fully removed from the river, freeing 676 kilometers (420 miles) of the river and its tributaries. This is the largest dam-removal project in history.
“This has been 20-plus years in the making, my entire life, and why I went to university, why I’m doing the degrees I’m doing now,” says Thompson, who is an artist, a restoration engineer for the Yurok Tribe and pursuing a Ph.D. in environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
“I feel amazing,” Thompson tells Mongabay at the annual Yurok Salmon Festival in Klamath, California, in late August, just weeks before the river was freed. “I feel like the weight of all that concrete is lifted off my shoulders.”
A river dammed
The Klamath River stretches 423 km (263 mi) from its headwaters in southern Oregon to the Pacific Ocean just south of Crescent City, California. It was once the third-largest salmon-producing river in the contiguous U.S., sustaining tribes for centuries and later also supporting a thriving recreational and commercial fishing industry.
Six Klamath River dams were built by the California Oregon Power Company (now Portland, Oregon-based electric company PacifiCorp) in the 20th century. The four lower dams, built to generate hydroelectric power, were Copco No. 1, completed in 1918, followed by Copco No. 2 in 1925, the J.C. Boyle Dam in 1958, and Iron Gate Dam in 1964.
At the time, they were seen as marvels of engineering and progress, promising cheap electricity to fuel the region’s growth. Together, these four dams could generate 163 megawatts of electricity, enough to power roughly 70,000 homes and drive development in the remote territory.
However, the dams came at a tremendous cost to the river’s ecosystem and the Karuk, Yurok, Shasta, Klamath and Modoc tribes who have depended on its salmon since time immemorial.
In the decades after dam construction, the river’s once-thriving ecosystem began to collapse and salmon populations plummeted. In 1997, coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) in the Klamath were listed under the federal Endangered Species Act.
The life cycle of salmon is tied to the free flow of rivers. These fish are born in freshwater streams and migrate to the ocean, where they spend most of their adult lives, and then return to their natal streams to spawn and die. This journey, which can span thousands of miles, is crucial for the genetic diversity and resilience of salmon populations.
Dams disrupt this natural cycle by blocking access to spawning habitat, altering water temperatures, and degrading water quality. On the Klamath, salmon lost hundreds of miles of habitat. Worldwide, not just salmon, but many other migratory fish species such as trout, herring, eels and sea lamprey are blocked by dams.
Dead salmon floating in the Klamath River in 2002. An estimated 70,000 salmon died when PacifiCorp withheld water behind the Iron Gate Dam, sending it to farms instead of letting it flow downstream. Photo from Salmon kill photo archive.Ron Reed, a traditional Karuk fisherman and cultural fire practitioner uses a dip net to fish for salmon on the Klamath river in Karuk territory. Photo by Liz Kimbrough for Mongabay
“The dams were like a blockage in the river’s arteries. They stopped the flow of life, not just for the fish, but for our people too,” Ron Reed, a traditional Karuk fisherman and cultural fire practitioner, tells Mongabay. He recalls the stark decline in fish populations during his lifetime.
“As I grew up, the fish catching down here became almost nonexistent. At some points I was catching maybe 100 fish in a year,” Reed says. “At the time the Karuk Tribe had more than 3,000 members. That’s not enough for anything. Not even everybody gets a bite.”
Commercial and recreational fishing also took a hit over the years. “Back in the mid-1900s, the Klamath River was known as the single most revered fly-fishing river in California,” Mark Rockwell, vice president of conservation for the Montana-based NGO Fly Fishers International, which supported the dam removal efforts, said in a statement. “Fly fishers came from all over the U.S. and other countries to experience the historic fishery. All that was lost because of the dams and the damage & disease they brought to the river.”
For the tribes, the impact of the dams went beyond fish. The dams created large reservoirs that flooded ancestral lands and cultural sites, particularly village sites and important ceremonial areas of the Shasta Indian Nation in the upper Klamath.
Reed also shared memories of the dangers posed by the dams farther downstream in Karuk territory. “When I was growing up, we were not allowed to go to the river. Before Iron Gate Dam was put up [to control flows from the Copco dams] you had that surge when they made electricity and that fluctuation was up to 3 feet,” he said. “We were losing people along the river. There are stories of our people drowning.”
The movement to undam the Klamath
The fight to remove the four lower Klamath dams began in earnest in the early 2000s, led by the Yurok, Karuk and Klamath tribes. After the 2002 fish kill made national news, the campaign to remove the dams grew beyond a local issue into a national movement supported by environmental NGOs and pro-fishing groups in California and beyond, such as American Rivers, Ridges to Riffles Conservation Group, California Trout, Save California Salmon, and the Native Fish Society.
In 2004, Tribal members and their allies traveled to Scotland to protest Scottish Power, which owned the dams at the time. The Scottish people rallied in support of the protesters, and in 2005 Scottish Power transferred ownership back to PacifiCorp, a subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy. Protesters then took their message to shareholder meetings in Omaha, Nebraska.
Those in favor of dam removal argued that dams had been catastrophic for the ecosystem. The lower dams provided no irrigation, drinking water or flood control. Electricity from the dams did not go directly to local residents but was channeled into the Pacific power grid, which powers homes as far north as Vancouver, British Colombia, and as far south as Baja California. And finally, it would cost more to bring the dams up to modern standards than to remove them.
On the other hand, residents of the Copco community stood to lose the Copco Reservoir, a lake used for recreation and a tourism draw for the area. Others feared loss of energy and water quality problems. The campaign to remove the Klamath dams faced numerous challenges, including entrenched economic interests, local opposition, and complex regulatory hurdles.
Dam removal advocates overcame these obstacles through persistent grassroots organizing, alliances between tribes and environmental groups, and media campaigns that brought national attention to the scientific evidence about the dams’ negative impacts on salmon populations and water quality.
But what really made a difference was proving that removing the dams would cost less than fixing them up.
PacifiCorp and its parent company, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, initially resisted removal, but gradually shifted their stance as the financial and regulatory landscape changed. The turning point came when advocates demonstrated that removal could cap PacifiCorp’s liability and potentially save ratepayers money in the long term.
In 2016, after much negotiation, PacifiCorp agreed to transfer the dams to the Klamath River Renewal Corporation (KRRC), a nonprofit organization created specifically to take ownership of the dams and oversee their removal. By agreeing to transfer the dams to KRRC, PacifiCorp found a way to get rid of money-losing properties while avoiding uncertain future costs and risks.
In 2022, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved the plan, paving the way for the largest-ever dam removal and river restoration project not just in the U.S., but in the world.
Ultimately, dam removal and river restoration came with a price tag of approximately $450 million, funded through a combination of surcharges on PacifiCorp customers and California state bond money. Although Pacificorp hasn’t provided an official cost estimate, they have said it would have cost a great deal more to keep the dams operating safely.
Removing mountains of concrete and earth
Removing four massive dams is no small feat. The process involved years of planning, environmental impact studies, and complex engineering work.
“Removing a dam is like performing open-heart surgery on the landscape,” says Dan Chase, a fisheries biologist with Resource Environmental Solutions (RES), the company contracted to handle the restoration work. “You have to be incredibly careful and precise, or you risk causing more harm than good.”
The physical removal of the dams began in mid-2023 and concluded in October 2024. It was a carefully orchestrated process that involved slowly draining reservoirs, demolishing concrete structures, scooping away the earthen dams, and managing the release of decades of accumulated sediment.
The removal of the dams occurred in a staggered sequence, beginning with the smallest dam and progressing to the larger ones. Copco 2, the smallest, was the first to be fully removed, with the process completed in October 2023.
This was followed by the initiation of drawdown (the controlled release of water) for the large reservoirs behind the three remaining dams, Iron Gate, J.C. Boyle and Copco 1, in January 2024.
The first step was to breach the dam (either with explosives or using existing openings) and lower the water level in the reservoir behind it. This was done gradually to minimize erosion and downstream damage. Contractors used special water tunnels and diversions to control water release.
Dam removal underway on the Iron Gate dam on Aug 15, 2024. Contractors diverted water during the removal process. Drone image by Liz Kimbrough for Mongabay.
Ren Brownell, the public information officer for KRRC, describes the day she watched the waters of the Iron Gate reservoir, tinged electric green from toxic algal blooms, drain in just 17 hours.
“It was like watching 10,000 years of geology in a matter of a week. [The sediment] washed away and eventually the Klamath River was revealed,” Brownell, who grew up in the area, tells Mongabay. “I end up looking back on that period as one of my favorite times on the project, because I got to watch a river come back to life and just reveal itself.”
Decades worth of sediment had accumulated behind the dams, most of which was washed downstream by the draining of the reservoirs. Although the river was extra muddy and turbid after each dam removal, experts view this as a positive sign of the ecosystem reclaiming its natural state.
The historic path of the Klamath river reemerges after the Iron Gate dam was removed and the reservoir drained. Native plants can be seen along the, planted by crews after the reservoir was drained. Photo by Liz Kimbrough for Mongabay.
With the water levels lowered, heavy machinery moved in to begin breaking apart the concrete structures. Kiewit, the contractor KRRC hired to complete the deconstruction elements of the project, used hydraulic hammers, explosives, and other specialized equipment to demolish the dams, piece by piece.
According to KRRC, the concrete was buried onsite and the earthen material was returned to nearby areas, ideally where it had been originally removed from to build the dams. Hazardous materials were hauled offsite to appropriate facilities and metals were recycled.
Restoring an ecosystem
RES, who is overseeing restoration, now faces the monumental task of restoring the river channel and the 890 hectares (2,200 acres) of land that were once submerged beneath reservoirs.
“It’s not enough to just take out the dams,” says Chase, the RES fish biologist. “We need to help jump-start the ecosystem’s recovery.”
This effort began years before the dams were removed. In 2019, crews of primarily Yurok tribal members began a massive effort to gather seeds from native plants in the surrounding areas, including oak trees, poppies and various grasses.
“We had crews out collecting native seeds, with close to 100 different species collected from the area that we then took to commercial nurseries to grow and harvest and grow out again to the point where we’re now in the neighborhood of 17 to 19 billion native seeds,” says David Meurer, director of community affairs for RES.
A combination of hand seeding and helicopter seeding occurred at all three major reservoir footprints: Copco 1, Iron Gate and J.C. Boyle. (The smaller Copco 2 dam had impounded just a narrow, rocky area that only needed to be reshaped, according to RES.) The first round of seeding served to stabilize the sediment and improve soil. RES says this was a success, though there have been some challenges and surprises, including some rogue horses.
“We did not expect a huge and ever-increasing herd of horses who obviously are going to prefer our forage, which is green and lush, to what they saw in the surrounding hillside,” Meurer says. To address this unwanted grazing, RES is installing a rather long and costly fence around the planted areas.
As the dams came down, crews also began restoring the natural river channel. RES worked with a Yurok construction company to help direct the stream back toward its historic alignment. The team is still fine-tuning the river’s path, using plane-mounted lidar laser imaging to map and guide their work.
Free-roaming horses graze on restoration plantings along the Klamath river. Before dam removal, this area was submerged by the Iron Gate reservoir. The piles of logs shown here will be placed along the river to guide the river path and create habitat. Photo by Liz Kimbrough for Mongabay
The return of the salmon
Down a gravel road in Northern California, through a thicket of willow trees, around big boulders, and over smooth cobbles, is the place the Karuk Tribe calls the center of the world. A massive wedge of stone, a mini-mountain, stands guard over a section of the Klamath River rife with riffles and rapids.
On the river’s edge, Reed sits atop a massive boulder, praying. A white bird traces slow circles overhead. It’s later summer, a season of ceremony for the tribes. The world renewal ceremony is tied to the upstream migration of salmon.
Reed, a tribal elder, hops spryly across boulders to the base of a small rapid. With practiced movements, he swoops the end of a traditional dip net, a 15-foot loop of willow tree branch with a net at the end, into the whitewater.
Karuk Tribal citizens Ron Reed and Sonny Mitchell catch the first fall chinook salmon of the on the Klamath river in late August. Photo by Liz Kimbrough for Mongabay.
Within seconds, a fat salmon thrashes in the net. Reed and Sonny Mitchell Jr., a Karuk fisheries technician, let out shouts of celebration. This was the first fall Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) of the season. They carry the fish back to a congratulatory crew and carefully clean it in a trickle of fresh water.
“We’re eating well tonight,” Mitchell says.
Because of their cultural and economic status, restoration efforts cater largely to the needs of the fish. As the physical landscape transforms post-dam removal, eyes are on the river’s iconic salmon.
“We’re already seeing positive changes,” Toz Soto, fisheries program manager for the Karuk Tribe, said, just weeks before the dam removal was complete. “Water temperatures are more natural, sediment is moving downstream as it should, and we expect fish to start to explore areas they haven’t been able to reach in generations.”
This expectation has already become a reality. According to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, “On October 16, a fall-run Chinook salmon was identified by ODFW’s fish biologists in a tributary to the Klamath River above the former J.C. Boyle Dam, becoming the first anadromous fish to return to the Klamath Basin in Oregon since 1912 when the first of four hydroelectric dams was constructed, blocking migration.”
And a post by Swiftwater films, the official documentary crew for the project stated, “The first chinook salmon in over 60 years are officially spawning above the former Iron Gate dam on the Klamath, just two weeks after construction wrapped on dam removal…The fish are bright, strong and beautiful. What an incredible few days and a testament to the resilience of salmon.”
Sonny Mitchell Jr., a Karuk fisheries technician, holds the first fall chinook salmon of the year caught by the tribe. Photo by Liz Kimbrough for Mongabay.
To improve salmon habitat, the RES team is adding structures to the river and its tributaries, such as fallen trees, to create pools and riffles the salmon require for spawning. They’re also installing what they call “beaver dam analogs,” structures of wood or rock pounded in along streams to slow the water down and catch sediment.
The removal of the Klamath dams will help many types of fish, says Shari Witmore, a fisheries biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who is studying salmon and other fish in the river, told Mongabay. The coho salmon, which are threatened with extinction, will gain about 122 km (76 mi) of river to live in. The project might also bring back spring Chinook salmon, which used to be common in the upper river but have nearly disappeared.
“What we’ve seen in other dam removals is that it takes about three to four [salmon] generations for salmon populations to become sustainable,” Witmore says. “And so for Chinook salmon, that’s 15 to 20 years, and for coho salmon, that’s six to 12 years.”
Pacific lamprey (Entosphenus tridentatus), another culturally important species for the tribes, and steelhead (O. mykiss irideus) will gain access to an additional 644 km (400 mi) of river. These fish can swim in faster-moving water than salmon. With more places to live and breed, all these fish species should have a better chance of survival.
And, of course, the whole ecosystem will benefit, says Chase of RES. “We have northwestern pond turtle. We have freshwater mussels. There’s beaver out there. We’ve been seeing river otter foraging … it goes on and on.”
Yurok tribal members and others fish at the mouth of the Klamath River. Commercial salmon fishing was suspended this year due to low numbers, but scientists predict salmon populations will rebound in about a decade. Photo by Liz Kimbrough for Mongabay.
Tribal knowledge and collaboration
The restoration of the Klamath River has been aided by tribal knowledge, sometimes referred to as traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) or, as Reed calls it, “place-based Indigenous science.”
“Certainly, the place-based knowledge component has been vital to us,” Chase says. “Thinking about the species of plants to use, where they’re occurring on the landscape, what species are culturally significant and important that need to be included. That’s been an element of refining and improving our restoration work.”
On the fisheries side, Chase says, the tribes have shared an immense amount of information with the RES team on how fish move through the landscape, the habitats they use, and the ways the different life stages respond to various environmental factors.
One example is related to off-channel habitats, places off the main river stem where fish can go in the winters when stream flow is faster and in the warm summer when cover and food are critical. Tribal knowledge about how to create and enhance these features, and how fish interact with them, has helped RES to restore historic salmon habitats.
Healing rivers, healing people
“The decline of salmon has been linked to higher rates of diabetes and heart disease in our communities,” says Thompson, the Karuk and Yurok restoration engineer and Ph.D. student. “Their return is quite literally a matter of life and death for us.”
The removal of the Klamath dams is a step toward healing historical wounds inflicted on the Native American tribes of the region through decades of genocide and colonialism, according to Thompson and Reed.
However, the fight to remove the dams has taken a toll on those involved. Reed speaks candidly about the mental health challenges he and others have faced during the long struggle.
“I almost lost my family. You’re gone trying to fix the world. I’m going to Scotland. I’m going to wherever, whenever, however. It’s hustle, hustle, hustle. Meanwhile, my wife’s home with six children.” Eventually, he says, “I broke down, suffered depression … I just happened to have a good, strong family that allowed me to kind of come out of it.”
Reed and hundreds of others persevered. “We’re not just fighting for ourselves,” Reed says. “We’re fighting for our children, our grandchildren, and the salmon themselves.”
“These salmon were taken care of by my ancestors, who I had never met and never had contact with myself,” Thompson says. “The salmon are like love letters sent into the future where the love and effort put into the salmon were done so that I could have a good and healthy life.”
Challenges remain
For the Klamath region, the challenges are far from over. Climate change, wildfires, and the legacy of more than a century of colonialism and ecological disruption still pose significant threats.
“There’s been so much degradation over the last 100-plus years from agriculture, forestry, water diversion and grazing,” says Mark Buettner, director of the Klamath Tribe’s Ambodat Department, which is responsible for aquatic resource management in the Upper Klamath Basin.
There are still two smaller dams in the upper Klamath River in Oregon: the Keno and Link River dams. These aren’t hydropower dams, unlike the four that were removed; they provide flood control and water for agriculture, and there’s currently no plan to remove them.
“I want to emphasize that we’re happy that salmon will be back, but we’re not really ready for them,” Buettner adds. “Sure, the fish have free access to the upper basin, but the upper basin habitats aren’t optimal. Young fish could be diverted into irrigation diversions. The Keno dam needs a new fish ladder.”
As I pass through Karuk territory in late August, traveling west toward the ocean, the air is heavy with smoke and fire crews pass regularly in their trucks, serving as a stark reminder of the work that still lies ahead. This includes addressing more than 150 years of colonial fire suppression practices, Reed says.
A sign warns of high fire risk near the Klamath river in late August 2024. More than a century of colonial fire suppression practices, along with climate change has made fires more frequent and severe in the U.S. West. Photo by Liz Kimbrough for Mongabay.As the Klamath River flows by, a wildfire burns in the distance, near Orleans, California on August 18, 2024. This is was just one of many fires burning in the region that day. Photo by Liz Kimbrough for Mongabay.
“When settlers first arrived in the Klamath region of what is now Northern California, they found forests with enormous trees, wooden homes and structures, acorn orchards, abundant plants, berries, fish, wildlife and clean water. All of it was made possible by Indigenous peoples’ frequent use of fire on the landscape,” Russel Attebery, chair of the Karuk Tribe, writes in a opinion piece for news outlet CalMatters. “California is not just fire-adapted, it is fire dependent.”
However, these controlled or cultural burns were outlawed in 1850 and are still “unjustly criminalized,” Attebery writes. The lack of prescribed burns, coupled with warmer and drier conditions from climate change, has led to more severe and frequent wildfires.
Wildfires are taking a toll on the Klamath River. Debris flow from last year’s McKinney Fire killed thousands of fish. Fires can heat up the river, making it too warm for cold-water fish like salmon. They also send silt and ash into the water, which can choke fish and smother their eggs. Sometimes, the erosion from fires even changes the river’s path. The ecosystem evolved with fire, but not at the frequency and severity of modern fires.
Reed and other traditional fire practitioners are being asked by academics and fire-management agencies to advise on traditional burning practices, and restore balance.
The irony of Native peoples being asked to consult on how to restore the land that was stolen from them isn’t lost on Reed. “I think we’re leading the nation with teaching cultural fire, through a faith-based process and hopefully this co-production of knowledge,” he says. But, he adds, “it’s kind of like, OK, they took our gold, they took our timber, they took everything, and they’re still taking our knowledge.”
Karuk Tribal members Ron Reed and Sonny Mitchell in “the center of the world” by the Klamath River. The air is smokey from nearby forest fires. As a cultural fire practitioner, Reed has been asked to teach and share traditional knowledge in academia and with government agencies but says Indigenous people are seldom justly compensated for their knowledge. Photo by Liz Kimbrough for Mongabay.
A cautionary tale
Many of the people I speak to cast the story of the Klamath dams as one of hope, but also as a cautionary tale for regions around the world considering large-scale dam projects.
While dams can provide benefits such as hydropower and water storage, they also levy significant environmental and social costs. Moreover, all dams have a finite lifespan, and their eventual removal is an expensive and complex process that planners often ignore.
“Dams were never meant to be pyramids,” says Ann Willis, California director of the NGO American Rivers. “They’re just infrastructure, and eventually, infrastructure ages. You can either be proactive about repairing, retrofitting or removing it, or you can deal with the far greater costs of a catastrophic failure after it happens. But there’s no question that one day it will fail.”
In many parts of the world, large dam projects are still being proposed and constructed. The lessons from the Klamath suggest these projects should be approached with caution, with full consideration given to long-term environmental and social impacts, as well as the inevitable costs of decommissioning at the end of the dam’s lifespan.
Site of the J.C. Boyle dam in Oregon after dam removal. Drone photo by Mongabay.
“No single agency is responsible for removing a dam, and [there’s] no requirement for dam owners to save funds for its removal,” Willis says. “The process of removing obsolete, disintegrating dams can take decades while people navigate a web of bureaucracy and look for funding. As time goes on, the risk of failure increases, which is incredibly dangerous as most dams would cause significant loss of human life and economic damage if they failed.”
As of February 2024, more than 2,000 dams have been removed across the U.S., most of them in the past 25 years, according to American Rivers. But more than 92,000 remain standing. Willis says she hopes the success of the Klamath dams’ removal and restoration project can serve as a blueprint for similar efforts around the world.
“The Klamath is significant not only because it is the biggest dam removal and river restoration effort in history, but because it shows that we can work towards righting historic wrongs and make big, bold dreams a reality for our rivers and communities,” Willis says. “Dam removal is the best way to bring a river back to life.”
Ren Brownell, public information officer for Klamath River Renewal Corporation, stands over the Copco 1 dam removal site. KRRC was formed to oversee the dam removal process. Photo by Liz Kimbrough for Mongabay.
‘Anything is possible now’
Amid the world’s tallest trees, where the Klamath River meets the Pacific Ocean, the annual Yurok Salmon Festival is in full swing when I arrive. On the main street, outside the Yurok Tribal Headquarters in the town of Klamath, California, dozens of booths are selling arts and crafts. There’s music, dancing, games, and a palpable sense of joy in the air.
But something’s missing this year: The salmon. Due to low numbers, both tribal and commercial fishing have been suspended this year.
Despite this absence, attendees express hope and a sense that change is coming. “We are delighted about the dam removal and hope for the return of the salmon,” says Yurok artist Paula Carrol. “We are salmon people. Without salmon, who are we?”
“This is still a celebration,” Thompson says, “and anything is possible now.”
A parade rolls through the town of Klamath, California during the annual Yurok Salmon Festival. This year, there was no salmon. Still, many attendees were hopeful for the salmons’ renewal post dam removal. Photo by Liz Kimbrough for Mongabay.
Liz Kimbrough is a staff writer for Mongabay and holds a Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from Tulane University, where she studied the microbiomes of trees. View more of her reporting here.
