An attorney and member of California’s Indigenous Yurok Tribe, Amy Bowers Cordalis has spent decades striving to restore the natural flow of the Klamath River in the United States.
The Klamath, which runs through the states of Oregon and California, was once the third-largest salmon-producing waterway in the Western United States. But four hydroelectric dams – built between 1911 and 1962 – stifled the river’s flow, decimating local salmon populations. The fish are a keystone species and vital to the Yurok’s way of life.
In October, though, Cordalis and the Yurok celebrated as crews razed the last of the Klamath’s four dams. The demolition was the result of a seismic 2022 decision in which federal regulators greenlit the removal of the dams and the restoration of the river.
The ruling marked the culmination of decades of Yurok advocacy, protests and legal action. Cordalis played a key role in the effort. She led the appeal to regulators and helped forge a negotiated agreement with California, Oregon and the dams’ owner that resulted in the decommissioning of the structures.
“I thought we were going to be the generation that witnessed the collapse and complete death of the river,” she says. “But now we will be the generation that sees the rebirth and restoration of our ecosystem, our culture and our lifeblood.”
For her commitment to Indigenous rights and environmental stewardship, Cordalis has been named a 2024 Champion of the Earth – the United Nations’ highest environmental honour – in the Inspiration and Action category. She is one of six laureates in the 2024 cohort .
“Indigenous Peoples are on the frontline of global conservation. Empowering them can help foster healthy ecosystems for all,” says Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). “Amy Bowers Cordalis’ relentless activism and community mobilization has led to a decisive victory for ecosystem health and environmental stewardship. This can inspire activists and Indigenous rights defenders everywhere.”
Rivers at risk
Rivers are arteries of life humans, wildlife and ecosystems. More than 140,000 species rely on freshwater habitats, rivers and lakes, for their survival.
Yet few rivers globally remain in their natural, free-flowing state, and they are increasingly threatened by myriad factors, including pollution, land conversion and climate change. River flow has decreased in 402 basins globally, a five-fold jump since 2000, according to UNEP data.
Few people understand this better than Cordalis and her fellow Yurok, who are the largest Native American tribe in California, with more than 5,000 members, according to the tribe .
Known as the “salmon people”, the Yurok have historically depended on the fish as a source of sustenance and a cornerstone of their culture. But dams on the Klamath have prompted seasonal toxic algae blooms, which change temperatures and fuel diseases, diminishing water quality, say California officials. Growth in populations and settlements has further increased pressure on the river.
In 2002, the federal government diverted water from the Klamath for agriculture, resulting in low river flows . This proved fatal for at least 34,000 adult salmon.
“It was like seeing your entire family being murdered in front of your eyes,” Cordalis recalls. “It was a form of ecocide.”
Combining culture, science and law
The fish death traumatized but also galvanized the Yurok, who ramped up their activism to remove the dams, collaborating with other communities, scientists, commercial fishers and environmental groups.
For Cordalis, it was a defining moment that inspired her tojoin law school and later become general counsel for the Yurok Tribe.
When she took up the role in 2016, the Klamath had one of its lowest salmon runs on record, forcing the Yurok to close its commercial fishery. Inspired by her great-uncle’s legacy – his Supreme Court win in 1973 reaffirmed the Yurok Tribe’s land rights and sovereignty – Cordalis launched a series of legal actions that have helped to sustain salmon populations.
In 2020, she formed the non-profit Ridges to Riffles to provide advocacy and policy support for Indigenous communities to protect and restore their natural resources.
“We use our traditional knowledge and back it up with science and the law to speak the language of modern-day restoration,” Cordalis explains.
Recovery and restoration
The Yurok legal victory in 2022 resulted in what has been called the United States’ largest-ever dam removal and river restoration project .
While the decades-long struggle to remove the dams is over, Cordalis’ work is far from done.
The Yurok plan to restore and revegetate around 900 hectares of previously submerged land, return territory to tribal ownership, restore aquatic and terrestrial habitats for the benefit of fish and wildlife, improve water flows, and boost salmon numbers.
Salmon have returned to more than 640km of the reopened river near the California-Oregon border, reports the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Conservationists have observed Chinook salmon migrating into a formerly inaccessible habitat above the site of one of the four demolished dams, according to news reports . Within four decades, their numbers on the Klamath may increase by an average of about 81 per cent , according to the United States federal government.
The removal of the Klamath dams is part of a worldwide movement to restore river health and improve climate resilience. Several countries, for example, pledged last year to revive 300,000 kilometers of degraded rivers under UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. That is enough to circle the Earth seven times.
“If we can do it on the Klamath, we can do it throughout the world,” Cordalis says. “My vision is that the water will be clean and plentiful, and that there will be big, healthy and shiny fish in the river.”
