Why we blew up four dams — and saved a river | Amy Bowers Cordalis

0:02You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. It was the largest dam removal in American history and the largest salmon restoration project in the world. For Indigenous advocate and attorney Amy Bowers Cordalis, the fight to make it happen began years earlier on a riverbank, watching salmon die in the tens of thousands. The last three or four generations of my family witnessed the salmon runs decline. They witnessed the river become sicker and sicker, more polluted, really because of the impacts of colonization. Amy is a member of the Yurok tribe, whose home along the Klamath River in Northern California was, for thousands of years, one of the great salmon fisheries on the continent.

0:53That was until a century of extraction and series of dams nearly destroyed it. In her talk, she tells the story about her tribe working alongside an unlikely coalition took down those dams and the remarkable recovery that has followed. Three days later, the salmon came home and went past historical spawning grounds not accessed in a hundred years. The salmon remembered. Yeah, they remembered. And stick around after the talk. Amy and I spoke about the generations who fought before her, the coalition that made the impossible happen, and what it looks like to live in balance with the natural world.

1:33We also get into why dam removal turned out to be the better deal for everyone, and how all of us can begin to restore a little balance in our own lives. That's coming up right after a short break.

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3:56And now, our TED Talk and conversation of the day. In the beginning, there were shapeless spirits roaming the universe. And they went to the creator and said, we are lonely, please help us. And the creator said, I will make you a place to be together on one condition. You must take care of it. The spirits agreed. And the creator made the earth and sent the spirits down to the earth to become land and water, plants, animals, and humans, making everything on earth alive. The creator told my ancestors, you will never want for anything, so long as you live in a balance with the natural world. Never take more than what you need, give thanks, and protect what gives you life.

4:58That is a version of my nation, the Yurok tribe's creation story. It's not a spiritual parable. it's a set of instructions, simple, practical rules about how humans are meant to live on earth. I want to tell you a story of loss, resilience, and victory, and what it means to remember. Since time immemorial, my nation has lived by these instructions. the lower Klamath River and what is now known as Northern California is our home and our lifeblood under our stewardship the Klamath salmon runs grew to be the third largest in all the continental U.S. we had an abundant fishing way of life caring for all that gave us life Then in the 1800s, everything changed.

6:03Newcomers arrived, and they viewed our world through the lens of extraction. Gold, timber, water, land, and people. The balance was disrupted, and suffering ensued in this place. By 1910, over 90 % of California's indigenous population had been slaughtered. It was genocide. By the 2000s, the Klamath River, our ancient relative, had been transformed by dams, habitat loss, water diversions, and warming polluted waters. The dams built without fish passage blocked the salmon from accessing over 400 miles of historical spawning grounds. Our salmon runs fell to 5 % of their historical abundance. The hydropower from the dams wasn't green either.

6:59The reservoirs behind the dams emitted methane, the equivalent to 64 ,000 cars a year on the road. In 2002, the legacy of colonization produced a horrific outcome. Over 70 ,000 adult salmon died on the Klamath River within the Yurok Reservation, the largest salmon kill in U.S. history. I was working for tribal fisheries that summer, and the salmon died for two weeks. By the end of it, their bodies lined the banks of the river, and the river looked and smelled like a war zone. Standing in a Yurok tribal fisheries boat, I recalled a Yurok myth. If the Klamath salmon dies, so too will the Yurok people, because our purpose, our way of life depends on those salmon.

7:59Was I witnessing the end? In that moment, I felt my great-grandmother move through me like electricity. I feel it now. And she told me, it's your turn to fight. and my response, I'll go to law school to prevent this kind of ecocide from ever happening again. Now, I did not know a lawyer, and I thought they were all rich and famous, but that's what I did, and I became my nation's general counsel, the first tribal member and woman to do so. Thank you. Thank you. and then I co-founded with Molly Myers, a real tough Karuk activist, the Ridges to Riffles Indigenous Conservation Group, and we moved money and power to better serve the river.

8:53And that was important. The fish kill triggered our duties as Indigenous people to share the original instructions and work to renew the balance. Indigenous peoples on the Klamath were the first to call for dam removal. People thought it was impossible. A dam removal of this scale had never been done before. Powerful corporations, some of the richest corporations and industries were against us. They said removing the dams would release toxic sediment and destroy the river for good. The odds were against us. But we had something they did not. the original instructions, thousands of years of traditional knowledge, ancient legal rights vested in the U.S.

9:45Constitution as the supreme law, and our duties and responsibilities to the river, its creatures, and our people, making the Undam the Klamath movement an unstoppable indigenous force. Yeah, we protested. Yeah, there we go, guys. Come on. All right. We protested. We built coalitions between indigenous nations, the Karuk, the Hoopa, the Klamath tribes, commercial fishermen, NGOs and states, and farmers. We litigated. We asserted the tribe's reserved rights and combined them with modern environmental power and energy law. We won on almost every count. Yeah. And the power company was required to install fish ladders to continue to operate the dams.

10:46Empathy overcame fear. And perhaps for the first time, we shared the original instructions with the newcomers, and they accepted their shared responsibilities to work to renew the balance. With our allies and our former enemies, we found a common interest. It was cheaper to remove the dams than it was to install the fish ladders. Yeah, right? Yeah, there's that common interest. So we worked together to find a path forward to restore the river and the balance, and the outcome was historic. A$500 million settlement agreement for dam removal that equally valued the rights of nature, business, and indigenous peoples.

11:38And it produced the world's largest salmon restoration project in world history. Yeah, feel that, like, oh my God. And also the largest U.S. dam removal project in history. In 2023 and 2024, we removed four dams on the Klamath River, and restoration across thousands of acres has already begun and will continue through 2028. I stood among tribal leaders when the first dam was breached through a series of explosions. The explosion released a freedom wave, a surge of water into a stretch of river that had been dewatered for more than a century. And the water, yes, yes, the water moved with such force and confidence, knowing exactly where to flow and how to go.

12:39And it seemed to declare, do not call this a comeback. I have been here for years.

12:48Later, at Iron Gate, the lowest dam, an excavator scooped some final dirt from the dam, and the water began to go over the structure, first as a sparkle, then as a ribbon, and then the river reconnected with itself. For the first time in 100 years, in a brilliant stream of prosperity. Three days later, the salmon came home and went past historical spawning grounds not accessed in 100 years. The salmon remembered. Yeah, they remembered. Many did not think that the river could heal, but its recovery has been remarkably rapid. A year after dam removal, the river is cleaner and colder and fiercer and smells sweeter than I have ever known it to be.

13:51And the salmon, they are literally jumping for joy. And if I wasn't wearing heels, I would jump for joy too. The first year, about 7 ,000 salmon passed the former dam site. in 2025, 13 ,000 salmon passed the former dam site and went further into their historical spawning grounds, they'd been denied. The many indigenous peoples of the Klamath, whose relationship with salmon had been severed by the dams, are welcoming the salmon home and returning to their homelands in historic, trend-setting land-back efforts. The Yurok tribe and many other tribes are employing tribal members and non-members, providing living wage jobs, restoring land in the river.

14:41These crews have planted, get this, 20 billion native seeds. These new ecosystems are bringing back plants and animals, foods and medicines that anchor indigenous cultures into the future. And these ecosystems have the potential to prevent 800 ,000 metric tons of CO2 a year over time. Yeah. Yeah. So I know many feel that there is no hope for a future on planet Earth because the Earth is too out of balance, too sick. And that sense of urgency is real. But on the Klamath, the river and all life it supports are remembering how to be in balance.

15:40And this project has helped us remember an important truth. We can heal nature. And when we work with it, it works with us. and it starts with believing in yourself. So I want you all to remember that what you do matters. What you do with your life force makes a difference. Treat indigenous rights not as obstacles to progress but as critical to it. Build mutually beneficial solutions to complex problems. Value ecosystem restoration as a strategic priority to the most pressing problems of our time. When we do that, balance is restored, life returns, and so does hope. Walk loud, walk loud, walk loud.

16:40Thank you. Thank you. That was Amy Bowers Cordalis, and don't go anywhere. After the break, Amy tells me about the generations of her family who fought for this river long before she did, including the time her grandmother and great-grandmother faced down a team of federal marshals from a tiny rowboat in a standoff that somehow involved underwear.

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18:44Amy, congratulations on your talk. Thank you. How are you feeling? I'm feeling great. Really energized and sort of in this deep place of curiosity about all the different ideas in this space. It's really remarkable. Well, let's go to your talk in the Klamath River. It's the main character and the soul of the talk itself. Yes, it is. And I'd love for you to take us there for a moment and paint a picture. I love starting with the river. And in my book, The Water Remembers, I also started the book with trying to take readers to the river. And describing it is difficult because it's a place of emotion and it's a place of like deep abundance.

19:31like deep thick rich abundance and the best I can do is to say that water is present in all its various forms so at the mouth of the river at the village of Recois where my family's from you know the Pacific Ocean is to the west of us and then there's the mouth and then there's the estuary and both are these just tremendously powerful bodies of water and this intersection between salt water and fresh water and so you just feel this sense of like interconnectedness between the universe and the water and the humans and that we're all influenced by each other There's also so much fog that moves in from the ocean.

20:23And so we're at times like covered in deep fog or the mist that that carries that covers the land and the trees and the bushes and everything. But it rains a lot too. And so it's just water in all its various forms, and it makes this part of the river super abundant and lush. And this is what I landed on in the book is that the river itself and Recoi, it's a place where anything can grow, right? Because all forms of life have everything that they need to flourish. Such a fertile land. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Speaking of growth, you have three children and you still live in the Klamath River Basin.

21:10So what is their relationship with the river like? They are just discovering it. You know, I think it's interesting for them because they are experiencing a massive transformation of the river, right? Many generations of my family experienced a pre-colonized river where it was just beautiful and there were redwood trees and the salmon runs were so thick you could walk across the banks of the river on the salmon and the water was clean and clear and cool. And my family, we really experienced that river up until my great grandmother's generation. She lived between 1904 and she passed in 1986. And, you know, I knew her.

21:58Right. But since 1986, the river has gotten sicker. It really has. And so, you know, the last three or four generations of my family witnessed the salmon runs declined. They witnessed the river become sicker and sicker, more polluted. and even just less water in the river, really because of the impacts of colonization. But now my kids, you know, they're five and 10 and 13. And so they're just kind of starting to understand the historical context. You know, they've seen the river compromise, but now they are seeing it heal. And so they love it, you know, and they're also they're just kids. And so they want to like find the frogs and they, you know, we do a lot of pole fishing.

22:46And so we'll all go up as a family and go steelhead fishing with just poles or salmon fishing. And we also just like to spend time on the river bar camping, whatever it might be, or day trips. And so they just love being up there. And also we're really trying to pass down the knowledge, the fishing knowledge, the knowledge of the river. And so they're in training. They're deeply in training. But it's a hopeful time because even though the salmon runs are still compromised, we know that in their lifetime they will be rebuilt. And so they'll have good fishing opportunities that maybe my generation didn't have.

23:34So it's exciting. It's an exciting time. And for the previous generations who actually saw the decline of the salmon run, what would you say to them now? Because they in some ways had to begin the fight. I would say thank you. You know, they fought when they had nothing but their heart and souls and lives. And they put all of it on the line so that we could be here today. the stories of the fight I write about in the water remembers to pay tribute to them because those stories aren't told anywhere else and they are tremendous they are victorious they are funny right there's this level of like indigenous humor in all of them I mean one one example is my great grandmother and grandma were in a boat doing what we called a fish protest, like a fishing protest.

24:32And this was in the late 70s. And the federal government had put a full moratorium on all Yurok fishing. So kicked us off the river. This was like making breathing illegal for us. And so they, the fed sent a full like federal marshal team, a SWAT team out with riot gear, machine guns to kick us off the river. And of course, we do what we do. We kept fishing. And so at one point here, my grandma and great grandma are in a little teeny rowboat and like, we are small people. And so they are not big. And they put their gill net out to protest and the federal marshals come over and they're ramming the boat.

25:12They're in this tug of war over the gill net because the feds were trying to take the gill net out so that, you know, to say like, Like, you can't fish here. Right, right. So the humor in all of this, which was a very violent situation, is that my great-grandma and grandma had tied what they called bloomers onto the net. And bloomers are an old-fashioned word for underwear. Right. And so you can imagine these big, you know, like federal marshals with full riot gear on. They come up and they pull up the net. And all of a sudden, they find these bloomers. It's lined with panties. Yeah, and they're embarrassed.

25:54They don't really know what to do. And there's like a group of people on the side of the river bar laughing hysterically. And so I would just really thank, you know, that generation and all the generations that fought for their tenacity, their audacity, their resilience. Because we would not be here if they didn't do the fissions. You know, even I mean, goodness, there was a Supreme Court case. You know, the family had a Supreme Court case, Matz versus Arnett, that reaffirmed that the Yurok Reservation was still Indian country. And we still had our sovereignty there and our fishing and our water rights.

26:32So, I mean, they they fought and they won in so many ways. And that is literally the foundation of how we got to climate dam removal. Don't go away. We'll be right back with more of my conversation with Amy right after a short break. This episode is brought to you by the Natural Resources Defense Council. For thousands of years, caribou have walked the same route to the same stretch of Arctic coast to give birth. We know from the antlers they leave behind going back to the Bronze Age. Some trees in the Tongas, America's largest national forest, were already old when this country was founded. and baby sea turtles have scrambled into the ocean every year since before the dinosaurs disappeared.

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29:57In 2002, you decided to become a lawyer to help save the Klamath. More than two decades later now, that dream has come to fruition. The river is healing. It's a rare success story, though, in environmentalism. It sounds like so many different and opposing coalitions, really, and groups had to come together to make this restoration happen. What did you learn about coalition building or advocacy work in this process? Yeah. What I learned is that on the Klamath, our community and our people is so deeply intelligent. Really, the grassroots work and the coalition building started with the grassroots folks on the Klamath, you know, community organizers, indigenous peoples who were from the river, you know, and deeply connected to the river.

30:55And they were just brilliant, strategic organizers. And a lot of that happened while I was in law school. They brought people together. they were able to put together trips to Scotland to protest at the stakeholder meetings of the dam owner companies at that time and then when the dams were sold to Berkshire Hathaway and Pacific War Power they moved the fight to more locally sort of in Oregon and Omaha and they were they were just brilliant you know they were so driven by this existential threat to our culture in our way of life, that failure wasn't an option. And then you talk about indigenous leadership, the nations amongst the Klamath, the tribal leaders never took no for an answer and they never walked away, you know, and they just said, we will win this fight one way or the other.

31:50And that is literally what kept us going. So then eventually I came in and I was, you know, tribal meetings, community meetings, tribal council meetings, and hear from all these brilliant people who would talk about the river, talk about how to bring people together. And also we had brilliant scientists that were able to uplift sort of modern science, but then also really uplift the traditional knowledge about how the river works. And so that combination of like Like leadership, community folks, ceremonial people, scientists, like I would listen. And then we could put that all into our legal strategy.

32:39And it helped me find the right words to be able to communicate through a legal language to the regulators, to the lawmakers, to the judges, you know, whatever it was that needed to be accomplished to get us over that next hurdle. And that's the advocacy piece, you know. But it's so grounded in listening to your community. And just to go back to the 1900s, there was a business case for damming the river. Is that right? Yes and no. So the dams were built between 1913 and 1962. And there were plans to build dams like almost throughout the whole Klamath. And luckily, a lot of those didn't go through.

33:22And we ended up with four dams on the mid-Klamath. And the dams were put in the river, mostly they said for flood control and then of course for hydropower development. And I ask this because the traditional binary is between business and the environment. But I'm curious what you make of that given what you've fought for and how you see these historically opposing forces now. Thank you for bringing that up because I think this is really an important point to pull from the Klamath. Klamath Dam Removal was profitable. It was profitable. Also, Klamath Dam Removal was a better deal for the power company and their ratepayers than installing fish ladders, which would have been required in order to continue to operate the dams.

34:11So at the end of the day, it did really come down, at least for the power company, to a business decision. And it was a rational, good business decision to remove the dams. So from my approach, and I think one of the best lessons from Klamath, is that we have to stop looking at problem situations as indigenous or environment versus business. And instead look to how do we sort of merge all of those interests and get a better outcome for everybody. After the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued an order that said Pacific Corps, you cannot operate these dams without installing fish ladders.

35:01That was the order. Then there was an economic analysis completed that proved it was cheaper to remove the dams than install the fish ladders. So that was one thing. And then the next was we negotiated a$500 million settlement agreement to remove the dams that equally valued the rights of nature, business, and indigenous peoples. Because we were able to remove the dams. It was cheaper for the power company to do that. And that was better for nature. So to broaden this out policy-wise for climate policy more widely, is it advantageous then to somehow be able to measure or price the cost to nature?

35:41No. Okay, say more. No. And the reason is, is because, and this is a strong point for the Yurok tribe, and I believe it, it is impossible to monetize nature. One thing for Yurok is we will never put a price tag on our salmon because there is a strong force in this capitalistic society that says, oh, well, it's okay then. I'll kill your salmon, but I'll give you a million dollars. and then it's okay. And then it's okay. I'll pay you. And it is never okay to kill our salmon. It should never be okay to compromise the earth and the planet to an extent that it cannot take care of people. And that's where we are.

36:27So no, you cannot monetize nature, but what you can do is value it, right? In a different way, which means that you can value it through restoring it, by respecting it. Because that was the other thing is like through climate dam removal, they would say at different points like, oh, well, we'll just put in a fish hatchery or we'll just take out one dam or we'll pay you$2 million a year for your salmon fishery. And that happens very frequently in other salmon producing rivers. And that was actually the trend of what the federal government did during the dam building era is they would say, oh, well, for mitigation for this dam project, we will put in a hatchery and we'll pay you$2 million a year for your fishery.

37:14But what we're seeing now after 100 years, 70 years, 50 years, 20 years of like operation under that regime is that salmon can't survive. They just don't. So now what we have to do and what the Klamath is scalable for is this idea of like, there's another way. We can work to find common interest, mutually beneficial solutions that allow dam removal. It's very situation unique, but I think the challenge for us as the humans and the leaders in these situations is to push yourself toward that better outcome. And I think we can use our updated data and technology to get to better outcomes. We just have to have the courage to do it.

38:05And how do we embody or implement what you're talking about, this return to the original instructions, this return to renewing the balance in our own lives? What would you say to listeners out there about how to embody indigenous wisdom in this era we're in. Yeah, I think it's a daily practice. And I talked about this in my talk, which was value yourself, right? And know deeply that what you do with your life force makes a difference. It really does. And so, you know, if you have a choice between working for, I don't know, some kind of corporation that is extracting things from the environment, but in your heart, you really want to work for nature.

38:50And maybe there's this nonprofit that isn't going to pay you as much. Like take the nonprofit job, knowing that you will be happier in your soul and that should have value, right? That should have value. And it's also like being really smart about our consumer choices. We have so much power and how we use our time, right? Like choosing to not just scroll or choosing to not buy all the cool things on Instagram, which I'm totally guilty of, but you can choose to not do that and maybe like go outside. Even if you're in an urban area, go outside and connect with that tree that is growing up from the concrete.

39:35Put your hands on it. I do this all the time. Literally put your hands on it. One of the practices we have at home is walking with your bare feet in the grass or standing in some part of the earth where you can literally put your roots and your energy down into nature and let all that anxiety go, give it to the earth, and then start to receive. And this is the other thing is that I titled my book The Water Remembers because I observed the water and the river and the salmon remembering where to go and what to do and starting to perform those traditional ecological functions to restore the balance of the river.

40:20But also witnessing all of that. I feel that happening with myself. You know, there's like this resurrection of hope. And I think that all of us have sort of accepted the environment as it is because that's what we in our limited consciousness have seen. And one of the powerful things about being close to Yurok and other indigenous peoples and leaders is that we have this deeper vision. You know, like our ancestors have been in this place for so long that they know what it was like pre-development. And our leaders could see that and they pushed us to that. And I think all of us, any person, whether you are indigenous or not, like at one point you came from a place, you came from a village.

41:12And that ancestral knowledge of what it was like to be so connected is deep in our DNA. It is deep in our DNA. And we should feel it. And it just starts with like literally breath connection to the earth. And gratitude is so important because one, I think that our immediate culture has put us in this place of scarcity where we never feel like we have enough. But if you just lead with gratitude, you realize for most of us, and of course this isn't for everyone, but you realize you have enough. Absolutely. And it comes from that acknowledgement of like, I'm thankful for this glass of water, appreciating the sun, appreciating that breeze or the rain.

42:00And I think that's a path toward reconnecting with ourselves and our human nature, especially in an era of technology and AI. Right. Yeah. We can't forget that. Amy Cordellis Bowers, thank you so much for sitting down with us. You were awesome. Thank you. You are listening to Amy Bowers Cordalis at TED 2026 and in conversation with me, Elise Hugh. Our conversation was recorded in Vancouver in April 2026. And that's it for today. If you're curious about TED's curation guidelines, visit TED.com slash curation guidelines. TED Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was produced by Lucy Little, edited by Alejandra Salazar, and fact-checked by the TED Research Team.

42:48Additional support for this episode from Maren Larson, Maria Alexa Kavanaugh, and Maggie Bishop. This episode was mixed by Steve Bone, and the interview was recorded in Vancouver by Dave Palmer and Rich Amies of Field Trip. The TED Talks Daily team includes Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Emma Taubner, and Tansika Sungmarnivong. Additional support from Daniela Ballarezzo, Valentina Bohanini, Banban Chang, Brian Green, and Lainey Lott. Learn more at podcasts.ted.com. I am Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feet. Thanks for listening.

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45:03All he talks about in a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash bank. Capital One N.A. member FDIC. Hey, we're Nick and Jack hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, email, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about.

45:37Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle slash workspace with Gemini. That's goo.gle slash workspace with Gemini.